Background:It has been shown that the pineal gland plays a fundamental role in mediating either the spiritual perception or the anticancer immunity by stimulating the endogenous production of anticancer cytokine interleukin (IL)-2.Objective:The present study was performed to evaluate the impact of a spiritual approach consisting of Kriya Yoga program alone or in association with melatonin (MLT) or low-dose IL-2 plus MLT on the survival time in a group of metastatic cancer patients with life expectancy less than 1 year.Materials and Methods:A case-control study was carried out in 240 patients (M/F: 146/94; median age: 62 years, range: 34-71, suffering from non-small-cell lung cancer or gastrointestinal tumors) who were subdivided into 6 groups of 40 patients, treated with supportive care alone as a control group, supportive care plus Yoga, MLT alone, MLT plus Yoga, inteleukin-2 plus MLT, or IL-2 plus MLT plus Yoga.Results:The best results in terms of increased survival time were obtained by the association between neuroimmunotherapy with MLT plus IL-2 and Yoga program (2 years), which was significantly longer with respect to that achieved by supportive care alone, Yoga alone, or IL-2 plus MLT alone (1 year).Conclusions:This study would suggest that a spiritual therapeutic approach may improve the survival time of untreatable metastatic solid tumor patients.

- Through the analysis of the literature about the subject of hospitalization and surgery in paediatric field, the objective of this work is to individualize some effective technique of communication with child to reduce anxiety associated with medical process and surgery, and to identify main factors that affect the child's answer to this communication. The considered literature was found by data banks PsycInfo, Medline and Cochrane Library and includes empirical studies on the theme of child communication during hospitalization. The studies suggest that giving to a child some explanation with a language appropriated to the age could reduces the anxiety for an unfamiliar environment, helps him to elaborate the information on the illness and on the hospital and to cooperate with the treatments. A good communication could allow the child to manage worry and to activate some thought about threatening situation in advance, this permits to activate some defense mechanisms and some resources to face the illness. Nevertheless, some studies show how the thecniques to reduce the anxiety are not always useful to lower the stress. This could depend on the age, on different coping styles and on the individual difference of the response to the stress situation. The communication with child about the subject of hospitalization and surgery is historically considered from clinic and dynamic area, but remains object of a poor number of empirical studies. Academy education and vocational training are also limitated for the health worker that takes care of this kind of patients.