Psychological outcomes in advanced cancer patients after receiving genomic tumor profiling results.

Prevalence of psychological distress and associated factors among patients undergoing comprehensive genomic profiling testing: protocol for a multicentre, prospective, observational study

“…An important next step will be to develop support programmes for patients with advanced cancer who are undergoing CGP testing. The PiGeOn project in Australia revealed that negative attitudes towards uncertainty and low self-efficacy for coping with the results before CGP testing predicted a higher prevalence of psychological distress after receiving the results, suggesting that psychological factors such as resilience, self-efficacy for coping and less perceived likelihood of cancer progression protect against psychological distress 7 8. However, in this study, we do not include these factors, which are labour and time consuming to assess, because we do not consider them when developing support programmes that are implementable in busy clinical settings in Japan.…”

“…Although previous studies have investigated the psychological burden of patients undergoing single-gene testing to predict recurrence or prognosis, or undergoing multiple-gene germline testing for hereditary tumours, only a few studies have investigated the prevalence of psychological distress and associated factors among patients with advanced cancer undergoing CGP testing 6 19–22. Although the PiGeOn project in Australia has reported a high prevalence of psychological distress and associated factors after receiving the CGP results in those with advanced cancer,7 8 there might be differences between Japan and Australia reflecting their cultural, institutional and cultural backgrounds. For example, Japanese patients with cancer are less likely to communicate their values and preferences to healthcare providers than their Western counterparts because they tend to leave treatment decisions to their oncologists 23 24.…”

“…Participation rates might be better if the attending oncologists themselves were to obtain informed consent directly from their patients. Third, patients with negative CGP results or with high psychological burden might be less likely to answer questionnaires, 8 leading to a selection bias.…”

“…Few studies have reported the results of psychological distress in patients with advanced cancer who are undergoing CGP testing 6. The PiGeOn project in Australia recently reported a high prevalence of depression and anxiety among patients with advanced cancer within 1 week of receiving CGP results: 23% and 39% of participants reported high depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HADs] Depression Score≥8) and high anxiety (HADs Anxiety Score≥8) in the clinically meaningful range, respectively 7 8. Moreover, patients with actionable mutations who were offered genomically matched therapies had significantly lower anxiety and depression and greater hope than those who were not offered matched therapies.…”