Conditions: Head and Neck Cancer Non-small Cell Lung Cancer
Keywords: cancer radiation therapy chemotherapy dexamethasone corticosteroids
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 79
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
This study will look at how dexamethasone and placebo influence radiation fatigue, quality of life and number of treatment days missed during radiation therapy or radiation therapy and chemotherapy for cancer.

Detailed description:
Subjects will randomly receive either dexamethasone or placebo and begin the study medication during the midpoint of their radiation treatment. Study medication will be taken for 14 straight days then stopped. Fatigue and quality of life will be measured weekly with short patient completed surveys. The number of breaks taken during radiation treatment will also be tracked. For safety, blood sugar levels will be checked with finger stick blood draws because dexamethasone is known to cause these levels to increase. Study participation will be approximately 3 months.

Arms:
arm 1: Subjects receiving radiation therapy or radiation and chemotherapy randomly assigned to placebo bid for 14 days arm 2: Subjects receiving radiation therapy or radiation and chemotherapy randomly assigned to dexamethasone 4 mg bid for 14 days

Interventions: intervention 1: Dexamethasone intervention 2: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: oral dexamethasone 4 mg bid for 14 days intervention 2: oral placebo

Protocol document:
Prot_SAP_000.pdf: