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Sandy Srinivas, MD
Sandy Srinivas, MD
Posted: Tuesday, October 4, 2022
Tailored self-management intervention may help veterans who are survivors of prostate cancer feel more confident in their ability to self-manage adverse symptoms in the long term. A randomized control trial tested an automated tailored self-management support intervention against a newsletter to determine whether the intervention system translated into a more efficient use of the health-care system, according to Sarah T. Hawley, PhD, MPH, of the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and colleagues. These findings were presented at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Quality Care Symposium (Abstract 373).
“Fewer visits for the most commonly chosen areas for symptom self-management suggest that such an intervention may hold promise for helping long-term survivors to effectively self-manage adverse symptoms,” the authors said.
In this trial, the authors recruited veterans who had been survivors of prostate cancer for more than 1 year from four different Veterans Affairs sites. The participants were randomly assigned to two arms of 278 participants. The intervention arm received tailored information over the course of 3 months relating to urinary, sexual, bowel, and general health symptoms. Both arms received assessment surveys at 5 and 12 months after enrollment. The 12-month survey assessed the participants’ reports of use of services as they related to their symptoms and asked participants to rate their symptom self-management confidence on a scale of 5 to 15. Those in the control arm received a general nontailored newsletter.
The 12-month assessment survey was completed by 226 participants in the intervention arm and 228 in the control arm. Those in the intervention arm responded that they had greater confidence in their ability to self-manage their symptoms than those in the control arm (P = .01). The participants in the intervention arm also reported using urinary (P = .03) and sexual health (P = .04) services less frequently in the previous 7-month period. Analysis of paradata showed that the two topics intervention subjects most frequently engaged with were urinary and sexual health.
Disclosure: The study authors reported no conflicts of interest.
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