Daniel D. Sjoberg

PURPOSE: Spiritual well-being and sense of meaning are important concerns for clinicians who care for patients with cancer. We developed Individual Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy (IMCP) to address the need for brief interventions targeting spiritual well-being and meaning for patients with advanced cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients with stage III or IV cancer (N = 120) were randomly assigned to seven sessions of either IMCP or therapeutic massage (TM). Patients were assessed before and after completing the intervention and 2 months postintervention. Primary outcome measures assessed spiritual well-being and quality of life; secondary outcomes included anxiety, depression, hopelessness, symptom burden, and symptom-related distress. RESULTS: Of the 120 participants randomly assigned, 78 (65%) completed the post-treatment assessment and 67 (56%) completed the 2-month follow-up. At the post-treatment assessment, IMCP participants demonstrated significantly greater improvement than the control condition for the primary outcomes of spiritual well-being (b = 0.39; P <.001, including both components of spiritual well-being (sense of meaning: b = 0.34; P = .003 and faith: b = 0.42; P = .03), and quality of life (b = 0.76; P = .013). Significantly greater improvements for IMCP patients were also observed for the secondary outcomes of symptom burden (b = -6.56; P < .001) and symptom-related distress (b = -0.47; P < .001) but not for anxiety, depression, or hopelessness. At the 2-month follow-up assessment, the improvements observed for the IMCP group were no longer significantly greater than those observed for the TM group. CONCLUSION: IMCP has clear short-term benefits for spiritual suffering and quality of life in patients with advanced cancer. Clinicians working with patients who have advanced cancer should consider IMCP as an approach to enhance quality of life and spiritual well-being.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the association between concentration of prostate specific antigen (PSA) at age 40-55 and subsequent risk of prostate cancer metastasis and mortality in an unscreened population to evaluate when to start screening for prostate cancer and whether rescreening could be risk stratified. DESIGN: Case-control study with 1:3 matching nested within a highly representative population based cohort study. SETTING: Malmö Preventive Project, Sweden. PARTICIPANTS: 21,277 Swedish men aged 27-52 (74% of the eligible population) who provided blood at baseline in 1974-84, and 4922 men invited to provide a second sample six years later. Rates of PSA testing remained extremely low during median follow-up of 27 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Metastasis or death from prostate cancer ascertained by review of case notes. RESULTS: Risk of death from prostate cancer was associated with baseline PSA: 44% (95% confidence interval 34% to 53%) of deaths occurred in men with a PSA concentration in the highest 10th of the distribution of concentrations at age 45-49 (≥ 1.6 µg/L), with a similar proportion for the highest 10th at age 51-55 (≥ 2.4 µg/L: 44%, 32% to 56%). Although a 25-30 year risk of prostate cancer metastasis could not be ruled out by concentrations below the median at age 45-49 (0.68 µg/L) or 51-55 (0.85 µg/L), the 15 year risk remained low at 0.09% (0.03% to 0.23%) at age 45-49 and 0.28% (0.11% to 0.66%) at age 51-55, suggesting that longer intervals between screening would be appropriate in this group. CONCLUSION: Measurement of PSA concentration in early midlife can identify a small group of men at increased risk of prostate cancer metastasis several decades later. Careful surveillance is warranted in these men. Given existing data on the risk of death by PSA concentration at age 60, these results suggest that three lifetime PSA tests (mid to late 40s, early 50s, and 60) are probably sufficient for at least half of men.