[Integrated therapy approach in the inpatient rehabilitation of women and men with total gastrectomy for stomach carcinoma].

On the basis of the documented course of 83 in-patient rehabilitation procedures in 28 female and 55 male patients who had undergone total gastrectomy due to cancer of the stomach, "objective" and "subjective" data were analyzed and correlated within an integrative treatment concept in order for one, to obtain as rehabilitation-specific a description as possible of how patients cope with the conditions resulting from their illness, and for the other, to contribute to furthering a multidisciplinary treatment concept, uniting the medical and psychosocial lines of approach. "Objective" data, i.e., data based on therapist assessments, inter alia include laboratory and other measures, diagnostic and therapeutic interventions and their gradings, sociomedical and psychosocial parameters, Karnofsky index, as well as Edinburgh Rehabilitation Status scores, while "subjective" ones, i.e., data based on the patients' own estimates, included symptom scores and judgements relative to treatment course and the so-called therapeutic environment. Findings are presented in detail for both planes (i.e., "objective" and "subjective" parameters) and discussed in light of pertinent literature. In particular the "missing" (yet perhaps expected) correlations among these planes are considered indicative of an urgent need for inclusion of the patient's behaviour and experience in the rehabilitative-therapeutic process. The partially surprising gender differences found are discussed with a view to behavioural patterns that might be conducive to coping with the malignant disease and its sequelae, an integrative treatment approach found to be of utmost importance, in particular in terms of the (therapeutic) relationship with self and others.