A Brief Psychological Intervention to Improve Emotional Well-Being During Neoadjuvant Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer

Purpose

This clinical trial tests how well a psychosocial oncology intervention with standard prehabilitation during neoadjuvant therapy works for patients with pancreatic cancer that has not spread to other parts of the body (localized). Chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy prior to surgery, is known as neoadjuvant therapy (NT). The advantages of therapy before surgery include: reducing the size of the cancer mass and/or reducing the spread of cancer, to improve the chance of getting all the cancer during surgery. Other research has shown that doing treatments in this order does lead to improved survival and a lower rate of the cancer returning. Even though there are positives, patients are dealing with emotional and physical symptoms of waiting until the therapies are done to get to surgery. To prepare patients for recovering after chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy to be ready for surgery, care teams have started prehabilitation programs. Prehabilitation includes exercise therapy and nutrition (healthy diet) support before going to surgery. This program has helped boost patients' strength to complete therapies, reduce the number of days in the hospital after surgery and support healing. While meeting with psychologists is available, researchers would like to see if combining it earlier during treatments may provide better support. An oncology (cancer) psychologist while undergoing cancer treatments before surgery may be feasible and helpful to patients with localized pancreatic cancer.