A spiritual approach in the treatment of cancer: relation between faith score and response to chemotherapy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients.

BACKGROUND The recent advances in the psychooncological and psychoneuroimmunological investigations of cancer patients has allowed the rediscovery of the importance of spiritual faith in influencing the clinical course of neoplastic disease, not only in terms of supportive care but also as a potential prognostic variable. MATERIALS AND METHODS Clinical criteria were worked out to explore the existence of a real status of faith, in an attempt to correlate the degree of faith with the clinical response to chemotherapy, consisting of cisplatin plus gemcitabine, and the overall survival time in a group of 50 metastatic nonsmall cell lung cancer patients. RESULTS The tumor response rate achieved in patients with a high degree of faith was significantly higher than in the other group of patients. Moreover, the mean postchemotherapeutic lymphocyte number was significantly higher in the patients with evident spiritual faith than in the other patients. Finally, the percent age of 3-year survival observed in the patients with a high degree of faith was significantly higher than that in the patients with a low faith score. CONCLUSION This preliminary study suggests that spiritual faith may positively influence the efficacy of chemotherapy and the clinical course of neoplastic disease, at least in lung cancer, by improving the lymphocyte-mediated anticancer immune response.