Uncertainty about diagnosis huge cause of stress

In fact, patients can sometimes be so anxious they won’t complete testing procedures such as MRIs, said study leader Elvira Lang, at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“Once people have the diagnosis, they gain some understanding and control. But without it, all they have is anxiety, and they do not know how to handle it,” Lang told Reuters Health about the study, reported at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

Lang and a colleague studied 214 women waiting to undergo either a breast biopsy, hepatic chemoembolisation—a treatment for cancer such as liver cancer—or treatment for uterine fibroid tumours.

Prior to the procedures the women completed tests to measure their stress and anxiety levels. The breast biopsy patients scored significantly higher on tests for anxiety and slightly higher on all other tests.

“We were very surprised to see that the women having breast biopsy were significantly more anxious than the women who came for treatment for malignant cancer and those who came for fibroids,” Lang said in an interview.

Lang recommended that medical personnel involved with diagnostic tests avoid negative suggestions and words such as “hurt” in explanations, and that they use comforting language that at the same time helped patients recognise their own strength.