The summer 2010 issue of C3′s printed newsletter Momentum is now available online.

Some headlines from this issue:

• Palliative Care: Not Just for End of Life
• Listening to the Little Voice
• Patient to Patient Advice for Caregivers
• Health Care Reform & Cancer: Your Implementation Guide

You’ll also read testimonials from advocates who attended the C3 Call-on Congress in March and learn about the young, innovative researcher who is looking into new treatments for late stage colorectal cancer, thanks to a grant from C3.

To receive Momentum free at home, sign up at the C3 Action Center.

Regular phone calls from specially trained nurses improved quality of life and reduced depression in rural patients with advanced cancer. However, the calls didn’t reduce cancer symptoms or time in the hospital.

While patients in the telephone based-palliative care program did live slightly longer than patients who received regular care, the difference wasn’t significant. Read the rest of this entry »

When advanced cancer patients talk with their doctors about preparing for the end of their lives, they have a better quality of life as death approaches.  They aren’t more likely to be depressed, and they receive less aggressive care in the last week of life.

Because it is frightening and uncomfortable, many patients don’t bring up the subject with their doctors.  Doctors avoid end-of-life discussions because they, too, find them uncomfortable and because they fear depressing patients or causing emotional problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Massage from a trained massage therapist gave pain relief and raised moods for dying cancer patients immediately after each treatment.  However, the effects didn’t last over time.

Researchers compared the effects of simple touch to therapeutic massage for 380 patients in a hospice program.  Randomly, some patients received up to six 30-minutes massages over a three week period.  Other patients were simply touched briefly in ten different places on their body over three minutes.  Read the rest of this entry »

Depressed patients with advanced cancer die sooner than those who are not depressed.  The more serious the depression, the more likely they are to die prematurely.

Researchers in the United Kingdom screened cancer patients for depression using tests that were originally designed to diagnose depression in women after childbirth.  They looked at feelings of worthlessness and sadness and thoughts of suicide, as well as measuring pain and cancer symptoms.  They found a little less than one-third (29 percent) of advanced cancer patients were depressed.  Six months later half of those identified patients who were still alive remained depressed. Read the rest of this entry »