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This article describes a study assessing the emotional and psychosocial status of 102 patients who had a recurrence of one of six types of cancer: breast, colon, lung, gynecologic, Hodgkin's disease, and malignant melanoma. In the cross-sectional analysis, patients contrasted their current experience with that at the initial diagnosis. The researchers also used test scores, personality inventories, and common clinical characteristics such as stage of disease in the comparisons. Although recurrence is clearly an ominous development, the authors found no research evidence that it is actually more distressing and menacing than the first diagnosis.
Weisman et al. (Sun,) studied this question.