ExBRAC- Expressive Writing in Breast Cancer (ExBRAC)

May 8, 2026 updated by: Region Skane

Expressive Writing in Breast Cancer - The ExBRAC Trial

The study is a randomized trial designed to examine whether an "expressive writing" intervention can affect the quality of life in patients recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The method "expressive writing" consists of writing about the breast cancer or other related subjects during 20 minutes, once a week for four consecutive weeks. The impact on quality of life will be assessed by having participants complete questionnaires at three different time points during the study. The questionnaire will be developed using a clinimetric approach, based on semi-structured interviews with breast cancer patients. The themes emerging from these interviews will be used to formulate the questions. Additionally, well-known quality-of-life measurement instruments and registry data with clinically relevant information-such as tumor stage and treatment-will be incorporated.

Study Overview

Status

Enrolling by invitation

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

272

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Sweden
    • Skåne County
      • Helsingborg, Skåne County, Sweden
        • Department of Surgery, Hospital of Helsingborg

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Planned for surgery of breast cancer without neoadjuvant treatment

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Not able to understand Swedish
  • Previous breast cancer

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Expressive Writing
Expressive writing for 20 minutes, once a week, for 4 consecutive weeks. The intervention is done in addition to standard care.
Behavioral: Expressive Writing
Expressive writing means that the patient writes privately about the cancer or other related subject for 20 minutes. This will be repeated once a week for 4 weeks. The writing should be done in a place free from distractions and on the patients' mother tongue. The text will not be collected.
No Intervention: Control group
No intervention. Treatment according to standard care.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Health-related quality of life
Time Frame: At the 12 months follow-up
According to EQ-5D-5L VAS. The scale ranges from 0-100 where 0 is "worst possible health" and 100 is "best possible health".
At the 12 months follow-up

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Region Skane

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Linnea Huss, M.D., Ph.D., Lund University

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

February 1, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

December 31, 2028

Study Completion (Estimated)

December 31, 2029

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 18, 2025

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

December 8, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

December 23, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 13, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 8, 2026

Last Verified

May 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2023-2888

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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