Psychogenic factors in predicting survival of breast cancer patients.

Considerable controversy and contradictory data exist about the notion that psychosocial factors can predict longevity in cancer patients. This study further addresses that issue by eliminating some of the methodological weaknesses of prior studies and focusing on a more tightly defined patient population. Forty-nine female metastatic breast cancer patients were given a variety of psychological tests. At the time of the analyses, all patients in the study had died from their disease. Patients were evenly divided into short-term survivors and long-term survivors based on length of survival as calculated both from date of diagnosis and from date of testing. The results indicated that there were no consistent differences between groups on any psychosocial variable assessed. These data suggest that, for breast cancer patients with metastatic disease, disease-related variables probably outweigh the influence of select psychosocial factors in determining length of survival.