Video game helps young cancer patients take meds (Reuters)
"Targeted video games can remedy improve the lives of in one’s teens people with cancer, most importantly gain their adherence to their treatment," Dr. Pamela M. Kato of the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.
Adherence is a greater problem in this age group, Kato and her colleagues point out in their report. While dramatic improvements in survival have been seen in pediatric cancer patients, they add, death rates mixed teens and young adult patients have not followed this trend. "They're kind of a tough group that gets a little atom lost in the system," Kato said.
To investigate whether playing a video game power prevent, the researchers randomly assigned 375 male animal and child-bearing patients 13 to 29 years old being treated at centers in the US, Canada and Australia to play "Re-Mission" or "Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb," a upright video prey not focused on cancer care.
In Re-Mission (
Patients in as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but groups were asked to play their assigned game for at least an hour a week, and 22 percent of those in the similitude group and 33 percent of those in the Re-Mission group actually did so over the course of the 3-month study.
Electronic pill monitoring showed a 16 percent rise in antibiotic adherence in the Re-Mission group, who took 62.3 percent of their total prescribed antibiotic medications, compared to 52.5 percent as being the Indiana Jones group. Adherence to a measure chemotherapy drug was also higher in the Re-Mission form into groups.
Playing Re-Mission was tied to improvements in cancer-related knowledge as well, the authors note.
According to Kato, the play worked because it gave the patients a new way of looking at their illness; for example, thinking of chemo as a way to combat cancer, rather than as an annoyance that makes their hair fall out. "To me it was friendly of changing their reward system for taking chemo and giving them a diverse insight," she explained.
The heroic can be downloaded free from the Web location by patients and medical professionals.
SOURCE: Pediatrics, August 2008.
