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New Video Game improves adherence to cancer medication routine

by on06 August 2008

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Patients show improved results


A study conducted by Dr. Pamela M. Kato of the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands has shown that a specially designed video game can help adolescents and young adult cancer patients stick more closely to their prescribed treatment plan. The medical journal, Pediatrics, has reported the results.
Keeping to a medication treatment plan is particularly difficult for patients in this age group.

According to Kato and her colleagues, death rates among teens and younger adults have not seen a big improvement in survival rates. It is anticipated that this age group finds it challenging to follow a treatment plan, and Kato wanted to investigate whether playing video games might impact this.

Kato and her researchers assigned 375 male and female cancer patients aged 13 to 29, who were being treated at U.S. Canada and Australian cancer treatment centers, to play two video games:  a game called “Re-Mission” a game focused on cancer care, or "Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb," a standard video game.  The game Re-Mission was developed by HopeLab, a California non-profit company, in which the gamers control a small robot named Roxxi who moves around in a 3-D environment that is inside a young cancer patient.  Players use Roxxi to control drug side effects, blast cancer cells, and win the game by taking chemotherapy drugs and antibiotics, eating nutritious food, using relaxation techniques and following other types of self-care.

Patients in both groups were asked to play their assigned game for at least one hour per week. 22 percent of those in the Indiana Jones group and 33 percent of those in the Re-Mission group did so over the 3-month study. During the study, electronic pill monitoring in the Re-Mission group showed an increase of 16 percent in antibiotic adherence in the Re-Mission group, and this group took 62.3 percent of its medications. In comparison, the Indiana Jones group took 52.5 percent of their total prescribed antibiotic medications. The Re-Mission group also had better adherence to standard chemotherapy drugs.

Playing Re-Mission led to improvements in cancer-related knowledge, as well, the authors found. Kato’s study concluded that the game worked because it gave the cancer patients a new way of looking at their illness. Chemotherapy was presented as a tool to fight cancer in the game. "To me it was kind of changing their reward system for taking chemo and giving them a different insight," Kato said.

Kato’s study concluded that "Targeted video games can help improve the lives of young people with cancer, most importantly improve their adherence to their treatment."

The Re-Mission game can be downloaded for free from this Web address by patients and medical professionals: http://www2.re-mission.net .

Last modified on 06 August 2008
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