UB Nursing School Involved In First Large-Scale, Quality-Of-Life Study Of Women With Lung Cancer

By Lois Baker

Release Date: October 13, 1999 This content is archived.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo School of Nursing is one of five nursing schools conducting the first national, large-scale study of quality-of-life issues affecting women with lung cancer.

Jean Brown, Ph.D., associate professor of nursing and one of the few nurse researchers in the country working with lung cancer, is lead investigator at UB. Nursing schools at UCLA -- the lead institution -- and Yale University, University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Medical College of Georgia also are involved.

The study, funded by the Oncology Nursing Foundation, is expected to generate the information needed to develop interventions and treatments to help patients manage the debilitating symptoms common to this disease: fatigue, pain, weight loss, loss of appetite, breathing difficulties and cough.

Brown said that little research has been done on lung cancer in women, despite the fact it kills more women annually than breast and ovarian cancers combined.

"Lung cancer is clearly a different sort of disease in women than in men," she said. "Smoking is the major cause, but 20-30 percent of women who develop it are non-smokers. In addition, women get it earlier than men and it seems to be more aggressive."

Both Erie and Niagara counties have higher rates of lung cancer among women than either New York State or the nation, statistics show.

The study will collect information from 300 women, 75 of whom will be recruited from the Buffalo area. Researchers will follow participants for six months, looking at social and economic issues, such as access to care, and will assess the impact of age, tobacco use, race/ethnicity and concurrent diseases on the participants' quality of life.

In addition, 50 families of women lung-cancer patients will be selected at random and followed to find out how the disease is affecting them.