This text is part of the special Research section
Better monitoring of symptoms or side effects caused by medication, help to promote good lifestyle habits before, during and after treatments: six projects are funded by the 2020 edition of the competition 1 million to help from the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation.
The work financed by the competition want to support care and help improve the quality of life of people affected by breast cancer in the province. This competition, created by the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation in 2014, is supported by the National Bank. Since then, more than $ 7 million has been invested to allow the completion of 30 projects. Here are two of the winners of the 2020 edition.
1. An app to track side effects
Oncologist at the Center hospitalier universitaire de Québec, the Dre Julie Lemieux treats several breast cancer patients. “More and more cancer treatments are given as tablets, instead of intravenously,” she explains. With these chemotherapy tablets or the new lines of targeted therapy, patients have less need to travel to the hospital. But these new therapies still require close medical and pharmaceutical monitoring, especially to monitor side effects. Up to 35% of people affected by breast cancer experience a severe form of emotional distress.
The Dre Lemieux, who is interested in the quality of life and symptoms self-reported by patients in his research, therefore proposed to develop a mobile application for the monitoring and management of side effects. “We want to give more information and self-management capacity to patients,” says Dr.re The best. Indeed, several studies report that patients with advanced breast cancer wish to have more information on the management of their treatment.
The developed application will inform patients about the side effects to watch out for. They will be able to enter their symptoms in this digital logbook. The aim is to manage side effects before they become too severe, to modify treatment accordingly. In the event of severe side effects, a message would be sent to the treatment team. “There is a growing body of literature that suggests that when patients report their symptoms electronically to the treatment team, it can decrease these side effects, hospital visits, and maybe even improve survival. patients ”, notes the Dre The best.
The funding obtained will be used for the development of algorithms as well as for the pilot study with around thirty patients who will test the application.
2. Adapted physical activity
Paquito Bernard also saw his project funded by the competition. A specialist in physical activity and mental health, Mr. Bernard is a kinesiologist and researcher in the Department of Physical Activity Sciences at UQAM. He is interested in the effects of physical activity on depressive symptoms, as well as on mental health during and after chemo and radiation therapy in breast cancer patients.
The call for projects represented a great opportunity for the one who is also a researcher at the Research Center of the University Institute in Mental Health of Montreal: “I can see everything I had done in the past,” he confides. he. The health benefits of physical activity for women with breast cancer are well known. Physical activity is also recommended for mood disorders as a potential treatment for depression; but no study had combined the two.
Mr. Bernard therefore brought together psychologists from institutions attached to the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal to develop a physical activity intervention that is as suitable as possible for women who are undergoing or have undergone treatment in breast cancer and experiencing emotional distress issues.
With this two-year funding, Professor Bernard will develop and test this program which, COVID obliges, will be done online. The patients who will participate in the study design will compare their level of depressive or anxious symptoms and the quality of their sleep before and after three months of intervention of supervised and adapted physical activities.
“Thanks to this competition, I was able to set up a scientific project, but which has a strong link with the clinical teams and the field. It’s really an added value, ”he says.
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