[Coping with Illness/quality of Life and Immunologic Parameters of Patients with Breast Carcinoma and Benign Tumors]

Objective: Maladaptive coping of the cancer illness leads to considerable psychosocial burden which can-as a chronic stress factor-impair various immune functions, e.g. cellular immunity.

Patients And Methods: In a collective of 118 patients suffering from mammary carcinoma and 48 patients suffering from benign mammary tumors Coping was measured with the EORTC-MAC-scale and Quality of life with three questionnaires. Out of the immunologic variables the lymphocyte subpopulations were determined with flow cytometry. Immunglobulines, neopterin, C-reactive protein, and herpes serology were determined using standard methods.

Results: At follow up a slight increase of the mean vales of sum-scores is observed for the adverse coping mechanisms, like helplessness/despair and fear. On the other hand, the values for the coping styles fatalism and denial decrease. Significant correlations are seen between anxious attitude and number of natural killer cells (CD16 and CD56). It must be pointed out that area of social contact show an inverse correlation in patients with mammary cancers: a strong improvement correlates with diminished natural killer cells as well as reduced activated killer cells.

Conclusions: The aim of this study is to determine whether a high risk group can be defined using these parameters and if these parameter can be influenced by psychotherapeutic interventions such as establishing "Coping-support-groups".