Recommendations

Determining Survival Expectations

 The recommendations of the study regarding the determi-

nation of survival expectations are given as they relate to

the conclusions stated in the previous section. The recom-

mendations are:

 1. The effects of biological, medical, and disease

variables must be taken into consideration in studies which

explore the relationship between psychosocial variables and

survival. The method used in the present study provides a

means of control for the effects of these variables that

depends on access to the records of many cancer patients but

does not require a sample of patients for analysis that

represents one cancer site. When larger numbers of patients

are available for study, control of these variables would be

more economically achieved by limiting the population for

study to patients with a single cancer site, similar stage,

and similar treatment history.

 2. The explanation of variability in the survival of

cancer patients is related to the discrimination of

differences on important variables such as treatment. In

addition to the qualitative information on treatment that

was studied in the present investigation, quantitative

information on treatment should be considered in the

selection of the sample or the analysis of data. The number