Catherine Watson, MD, Details Results of Prospective Trial on Patient Education in Ovarian Cancer

CancerNetwork® spoke with Catherine Watson, MD, an assistant professor of gynecologic oncology at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, at The Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2022 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer about a prospective, randomized trial (NCT04537702) investigating the noninferiority of streamlined genetics education and testing for patients with ovarian cancer.

Watson detailed the results of the trial, explaining there was no statistically significant difference in the multidimensional impact of cancer risk assessment (MICRA) scores and the Impact of Events scores between the streamlined and traditional education arms.

Transcript:

There was no difference in MICRA score between the 2 groups. We also looked at the Impact of Events score throughout the process for subjects in both arms, and that score assessed patient distress about the possibility of carrying a mutation. There was no statistical difference between the 2 groups at any point in the process. Interestingly, the scores were a little higher indicating possibly increased distress in the traditional group. We could hypothesize why it could be that patients don’t need that much information— [maybe] it’s an information overload—but that wasn’t statistically significant. The take home point was that between these 2 arms, there was no difference that we could detect in terms of patient distress or anxiety around this process.

Reference

Watson C. Prospective, randomized trial of streamlined genetic education and testing for patients with high grade epithelial ovarian, fallopian and peritoneal cancer. Presented at: The Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2022 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer; March 18-21, 2022; Phoenix, AZ.