Emotional distress prior to chemotherapy and delayed nausea in breast cancer patients

Abstract

9527 Background: Delayed nausea following cancer chemotherapy (occurring more than 24 hours post-treatment) is not well controlled by antiemetic medication and remains a widespread problem in clinical practice. Possible modifiable risk factors for delayed nausea are thus an important area for research. Two recent small scale studies with heterogeneous patient samples have raised the possibility that heightened levels of pretreatment emotional distress may be one such risk factor. The present study analyzed a preexisting dataset to test the hypothesis that patients’ levels of emotional distress on the morning of their first chemotherapy infusion would predict the severity of delayed nausea assessed daily following treatment. Methods: Data from women (n=118) with breast cancer (mean age = 52.2 years) treated as outpatients with doxorubicin and standard antiemetics (e.g., 5HT3 agonists) were included in this study. Patients were asked to rate their emotional distress (independent variable) for the morning of...