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Status unknownNCT03096925Updated Feb 1, 2023

Non-cardiac Chest Pain: Effect of Cognitive Therapy Administered as Guided Self-help

An interventional study of Guided self-help in Chest Pain, sponsored by Sorlandet Hospital HF. Status unknown at 1 site in Norway. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 70 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2023-02-01.

Sponsored by Sorlandet Hospital HF · Not applicable, Interventional, and Treatment

The sponsor has not verified this record recently (last verified Jan 2023), so the status shown — last known as Active, not recruiting — may be out of date.
Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
160
Allocation
Randomized
Ages
18 Years to 70 Years
Sex
All
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Study summary

This study aims to test an easily implementable web-based cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) self-help intervention designed for non-cardiac chest pain patients, and compare effectiveness and cost-effectiveness to treatment as usual in an randomized controlled trial (RCT).

Read the detailed description

Most patients with chest pain referred to hospital do not have a cardiac illness. Non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP) is often followed by persistent distress and reduced quality of life, and societal costs are nearly equal to those of cardiac patients. Research suggests that face-to-face CBT is effective, but this has not been implemented as standard treatment. We plan to test an easily implementable web-based guided self-help intervention for NCCP patients.

Patients will be recruited at the chest pain unit at Sørlandet Hospital, Kristiansand, and will be recruited after they have finished their cardiac examination.

The intervention group will receive six web-based sessions, comprising information, exposure to physical activity, how worry can excess pain, physical reactions to pain and worry, consequences of avoidance, and specific panic treatment.

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Conditions studied

  • Chest Pain

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Keywords

  • non-cardiac chest pain
  • anxiety
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In context

Chest Pain

381 studies on the registry are indexed under Chest Pain; 66 are open to participants now.

This study's enrollment of 160 is above the median of 143 across 201 interventional studies indexed under Chest Pain.

Browse Chest Pain studies →

Lead sponsor

Sorlandet Hospital HF is the lead sponsor of 73 studies on the registry; 12 are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

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Who can participate

Ages eligible
18 Years to 70 Years
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
No

Inclusion criteria

  • Non-Cardiac Chest Pain

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Language difficulties
  • Unable to perform at least moderate physical activity due to physical constraints
  • Obvious cognitive impairment (e.g mentally retarded, psychotic, dementia or intoxicated)
  • no regular access to a computer/tablet computer with internet connection
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Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Treatment
Allocation
Randomized
Intervention model
Parallel assignment
Masking
None (open label)
Enrollment
160 participants (actual)

Study arms

  • Experimental
    Intervention group

    The intervention group will receive guided self-help comprising six web-based sessions, comprising information, exposure to physical activity, how worry can excess pain, physical reactions to pain and worry, consequences of avoidance, and specific panic treatment. The first session will be done at the hospital before discharge, the others at home. Between sessions there will be a brief telephone contact with a project worker.

    Behavioral: Guided self-help

  • No intervention
    Control group

    This group will receive treatment as usual, which is no specific treatment. They can however use the general health system as they like.

Interventions

  • BehavioralGuided self-help

    Web-based guided self-help intervention

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What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Change in Cardiac Anxiety Questionnaire (CAQ)

    CAQ is an 18-item self-report-questionnaire which measures hearth related anxiety/fear, attention, avoidance and safety seeking behavior. Each item is rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 0 to 4. Total range 0-72 where higher score represents more symptoms. Primary outcome is difference in mean score between intervention arm and control arm for CAQ at end of treatment (6 weeks after randomization for both arms). Difference in mean scores between arms will also be assessed at pretreatment/baseline, and at 3 months and 12 months after end of treatment (18 weeks and 58 weeks after randomization). There is no predefined clinical relevant effect for this measure, we use a distribution based method and define clinical relevant effect as improvement of more than 0.5 standard deviation compared to baseline.

    Time frame: 58 weeks

  2. Change in Body Sensations Questionnaire (BSQ)

    BSQ is an 17-item self-report-questionnaire which measures fear of different bodily sensations. Each item is rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 to 5. Total range 17-85 where higher score represents more symptoms. Primary outcome is difference in mean score between intervention arm and control arm for BSQ at end of treatment (6 weeks after randomization for both arms). Difference in mean scores between arms will also be assessed at pretreatment/baseline, and at 3 months and 12 months after end of treatment (18 weeks and 58 weeks after randomization). There is no predefined clinical relevant effect for this measure, we use a distribution based method and define clinical relevant effect as improvement of more than 0.5 standard deviation compared to baseline.

    Time frame: 58 weeks

Secondary outcomes

  1. Change in Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ)

    BIPQ is an 8-item self-report-questionnaire which assess the patient's perception/beliefs about their symptoms. Each item is rated on a 0-10 scale. The items represent different components/dimensions. Secondary outcome is difference in mean score between intervention arm and control arm for item 1, 5, 6 and 8 at end of treatment (6 weeks after randomization for both arms). Difference in mean scores between arms will also be assessed for item 1, 5, 6 and 8 at pretreatment/baseline, and at 3 months and 12 months after end of treatment (18 weeks and 58 weeks after randomization). There is no predefined clinical relevant effect for these items, we use a distribution based method and define clinical relevant effect as improvement of more than 0.5 standard deviation compared to baseline.

    Time frame: 58 weeks

  2. Change in Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)

    PHQ-9 is an 9 item self-report-questionnaire which assess depression symptoms. Each item is rated on a 0-3 scale. Total range 0-27 where higher score represents more symptoms. Secondary outcome is difference in mean score between intervention arm and control arm for PHQ-9 at end of treatment (6 weeks after randomization for both arms). Difference in mean scores between arms will also be assessed at pretreatment/baseline, and at 3 months and 12 months after end of treatment (18 weeks and 58 weeks after randomization). We define clinical relevant effect as an absolute drop of 5 points on an individual level, and between groups as an improvement of 3 points.

    Time frame: 58 weeks

  3. Change in General perceived Self-Efficacy Scale

    GSE is an 10 item self-report-questionnaire which assess self-efficacy. Each item is rated on a 1-4 Lickert scale. Total range 10-40 where higher score represents more self-efficacy. Secondary outcome is difference in mean score between intervention arm and control arm for GSE at end of treatment (6 weeks after randomization for both arms). Difference in mean scores between arms will also be assessed at pretreatment/baseline, and at 3 months and 12 months after end of treatment (18 weeks and 58 weeks after randomization). There is no predefined clinical relevant effect for this measure, we use a distribution based method and define clinical relevant effect as improvement of more than 0.5 standard deviation compared to baseline. We will also investigate its ability to predict treatment effect.

    Time frame: 58 weeks

  4. Change in EQ-5D-5L

    EQ-5D-5L is an 5 item (plus a VAS scale) self-report-questionnaire assessing health related quality of life. Secondary outcome is difference in mean score between intervention arm and control arm for EQ-5D-5L at end of treatment (6 weeks after randomization for both arms). Difference in mean scores between arms will also be assessed at pretreatment/baseline, and at 3 months and 12 months after end of treatment (18 weeks and 58 weeks after randomization). Distribution based methods are commonly used, defining improvement of 0.2 or 0.5 SD as clinical relevant. We define a minimal clinical relevant improvement to be 0.2 SD in EQ-5D-5L.

    Time frame: 58 weeks

  5. Health care costs

    Secondary outcome is to calculate the difference in healthcare utilization between intervention and control arm over a period of 12 months after end of treatment. We will collect data on both direct and indirect costs with self-report forms collected every third month, as well as register data. We will compare the costs between the two arms.

    Time frame: 58 weeks

Other outcomes

  1. Composite measures

    If the primary and secondary outcomes surprisingly do not show difference of statistical significance and clinical relevance, the study data will be searched for composite measures showing clinically and statistical relevance

    Time frame: 58 weeks

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Study locations

1 site
  • Sorlandet Sykehus HF
    Kristiansand, Vest Agder 4604, Norway
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References and documents

Publications

  • Thesen T, Himle JA, Martinsen EW, Walseth LT, Thorup F, Gallefoss F, Jonsbu E. Effectiveness of Internet-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy With Telephone Support for Noncardiac Chest Pain: Randomized Controlled Trial. J Med Internet Res. 2022 Jan 24;24(1):e33631. doi: 10.2196/33631. PubMed 35072641 ↗

Individual participant data

Plan to share: Undecided

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Updates

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Feb 1, 2023, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT03096925
Lead sponsor
Sorlandet Hospital HF
Responsible party
Sponsor
First posted
Mar 30, 2017
Start date
Apr 3, 2017
Primary completion
Dec 19, 2019
Completion
Jan 1, 2024 (estimated)
Last update
Feb 1, 2023

Study contacts

Frode Gallefoss, MD, PhD
study director · Head of Clinical Research, Sørlandet HF.
Liv T Walseth, MD, PhD
principal investigator · Researcher, Sørlandet HF

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

Not currently enrolling

This study is status unknown, as verified in Jan 2023. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.

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