CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 146Attachment and Relationship DynamicsCancer survivorship and carePatient-Provider Communication in Healthcare

Partner‐assisted emotional disclosure for patients with gastrointestinal cancer: Results from a randomized controlled trial

Open access
Porter, Laura S., Keefe, Francis J., Baucom, Donald H., Hurwitz, Herbert, Moser, Barry, Patterson, Emily, Kim, Hong Jin·2009·Cancer
DOI 10.1002/cncr.24578PMC PMC2762322
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

BACKGROUND: For patients with cancer who are married or in an intimate relationship, their relationships with their partners play a critical role in their adaptation to illness. However, cancer patients and their partners often have difficulty in talking with each other about their cancer‐related concerns. Difficulties in communication ultimately may compromise both the patient‐partner relationship and the patient's psychological adjustment. The current study tested the efficacy of a novel partner‐assisted emotional disclosure intervention in a sample of patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancer. METHODS: One hundred thirty patients with GI cancer and their partners were assigned randomly to receive 4 sessions of either partner‐assisted emotional disclosure or a couples cancer education/support intervention. Patients and partners completed measures of relationship quality, intimacy with their partner, and psychological distress before randomization and at the end of the intervention sessions. Data were analyzed using multilevel modeling. RESULTS: Compared with an education/support condition, the partner‐assisted emotional disclosure condition led to improvements in relationship quality and intimacy for couples in which the patient initially reported higher levels of holding back from discussing cancer‐related concerns. CONCLUSIONS: Partner‐assisted emotional disclosure is a novel intervention that builds on both the private emotional disclosure and the cognitive‐behavioral marital literature. The results of this study suggested that this intervention may be beneficial for couples in which the patient tends to hold back from discussing concerns. The authors concluded that future research on methods of enhancing the effects of partner‐assisted emotional disclosure is warranted. Cancer 2009;115(18 suppl):4326–38. © 2009 American Cancer Society.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1002/cncr.24578

Cites

55 of 55 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The education/support condition was tested in the authors' pilot feasibility trial and is similar to controls in other cancer trials.

    “The education/support condition was tested in our pilot feasibility trial [23] and is similar to controls in other cancer trials [34, 35].”

    From Protocol of a randomized trial of acceptance and commitment therapy for fatigue interference in metastatic breast cancer (2020) · cites this paper as [35]

    The Method > Procedures section says participants were randomly assigned to education/support or partner-assisted emotional disclosure, so this paper did test the education/support condition. Our copy describes the study as a randomized controlled trial, but does not identify it as a pilot feasibility trial. The comparison with controls in other cancer trials is attributed to different citations and is not judged here. (LLM, conf=0.82)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Twelve studies lacked sufficient data or had incompatible designs and were included only in the narrative synthesis.

    “Twelve studies (13 reports because of one pair of publications from the same RCT 42 , 43 ) lacked sufficient data or had incompatible designs (e.g., re‐randomization, multiple overlapping intervention arms) and were included only in the narrative synthesis”

    From Nonpharmacologic interventions for managing distress, anxiety, and depression for patients with cancer and their family caregivers: A systematic review and meta‐analysis (2026) · cites this paper as [42]

    The Method > Data Analyses section describes this paper’s randomized trial and its analysis of 130 couples, not a synthesis of multiple studies. I searched for the twelve-study count, insufficient data, incompatible designs, and narrative synthesis; our copy does not address which studies a later review included only in its narrative synthesis. The indexed passages provide section labels but no page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.76)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [30]Bernhard JaH C JCH Gastrointestinal cancer Psycho-oncology 1998 324 339 Oxford University Press New York

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Porter, L. S., Keefe, F. J., Baucom, D. H., Hurwitz, H., Moser, B., Patterson, E., & Kim, H. J.
Affiliations
  • Duke University (US)
  • Duke Medical Center (US)
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
ORCID
Venue
Cancer
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2009-09-04
Volume
115
Issue
S18
Pages
4326-4338
ISSN
  • 0008-543X (ISSN-L)
  • 1097-0142
DOI
10.1002/cncr.24578
PMC
PMC2762322
OpenAlex
W1497307252
Cited by
146
References
50
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 11
FWCI
9.97
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor)
Locations
  • Cancer (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
National Cancer Institute (R01CA100743, R01CA100734)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Cancer survivorship and care
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Patient-Provider Communication in Healthcare
Keywords
gastrointestinal cancer, couples, emotional disclosure, marital communication, relationship quality, intimacy, psychological distress, patient-partner relationship
MeSH terms
Adaptation, Psychological, Emotions, Female, Gastrointestinal Neoplasms, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Middle Aged, Personal Satisfaction, Psychotherapy, Self Disclosure, Social Support, Spouses

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review