The chemotherapy are often administered in open rooms, where several patients receive their treatment. The opportunity for them to exchange and why not, to create links. Can these social interactions have an impact on patients’ chances of survival? This is the question that British researchers have asked themselves, for the needs of a study published in the journal Network Science.
A 2% improvement
To find the answer, they followed, between 2000 and 2009, 4,691 patients with Cancer and undergoing chemotherapy at a hospital in Oxfordshire, UK. The premises consisted of two treatment rooms with 10 beds and six chairs arranged in a circle. The researchers found that 72% of patients who were undergoing chemotherapy with people who had died within five years of their diagnostic were also deceased within that time. The death rate dropped to 68% when patients received their treatment alongside people who survived within five years of their diagnosis.
The researchers estimate that patients who were isolated from others while receiving their chemotherapy would have had a 69.5% chance of surviving in the same amount of time. Thus, spending time with patients who survived within five years of their diagnosis would increase the chances of survival by 2%. “This 2% difference might not seem like much, but it’s quite significant (…) If you’ve seen 5,000 patients in nine years, this 2% improvement would affect 100 people”, Explain Jeff Lienert, lead author of the study. He specifies that this phenomenon could be due to the reduction of stress caused by social interactions.
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