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 “We found that the baby boomers are much more likely to use
complimentary and alternative therapies than their parents in part
due to a social change in the U.S. in the 60s and 70s with a big
social movement toward things like a macrobiotic diet and yoga that
made these things more mainstream,” said senior study author Dr. Jun
Mao, director of integrated oncology at the Abramson Cancer Center
at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Mao and colleagues surveyed adults with breast, lung and
gastrointestinal tumors who were treated at the cancer center
between June 2010 and September 2011.
They asked whether patients had used any complimentary or
alternative medicine therapies since starting treatment, and offered
examples such as acupuncture, chiropractic care, art therapy,
massage, yoga, tai chi, special diets or herbal supplements.
The 969 people who completed the survey were 59 years old on
average; 63% were women and most were white and college-educated.
Slightly more than half the participants had been diagnosed with
cancer more than a year before completing the survey. About 59% had
tried at least one form of complimentary or alternative medicine
therapy since their diagnosis.
Patients who were female, age 65 or younger, or college-educated
were much more likely than other study participants to expect
alternative or complementary treatments to be beneficial, the
researchers report online May 26 in the journal Cancer.
People who were working, or who had been living with their cancer
diagnosis for longer, were also more likely to believe in the
potential benefits of nontraditional treatments, as were people who
had already tried these options.
The people in the study who tried alternative and complimentary
therapies were generally 65 or younger, had at least some college
education, didn’t have chemotherapy, and had their diagnosis for
more than a year.
Barriers to alternative and complimentary treatments included lack
of knowledge about these options, lack of insurance coverage and the
inability to find a provider. Non-white patients were more likely to
perceive barriers to this type of care.
The study only included patients with three types of cancer, and it
wasn’t designed to assess how often or extensively participants
might use alternative or complimentary therapies, the researchers
acknowledge.
Another drawback of the study is that it didn’t distinguish between
alternative medicine, approaches that lack any evidence of
effectiveness, and complimentary therapies that have been found to
relieve symptoms, said Barrie Cassileth, founding chief of the
integrative medicine program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer
Center in New York.
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“Once you lump these together, you don’t know what people are
responding to when you ask them about their beliefs,” said Cassileth,
who wasn’t involved in the study.
All comprehensive cancer centers in the U.S. include programs in
integrative medicine that offer patients additional tools to manage
the symptoms of cancer as well as side effects from treatment, as
well as palliative care at the end of life, Cassileth said.
These programs focus on evidence-based medicine that can be offered
along side traditional cancer treatment, but steer clear of
approaches without any science to suggest they might be effective,
said Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, director of the integrative medicine program
at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Patients considering complimentary medicine to ease symptoms should
ensure that the practitioner offering options like yoga or
acupuncture is familiar with the side effects of cancer and willing
to coordinate care with an oncology team, he said. While such
providers may be on staff at a comprehensive cancer center, patients
should exercise caution when seeking a provider on their own, he
noted.
“It’s very important that they have experience in working with
cancer patients, and that they absolutely don’t recommend something
in place of conventional care,” said Cohen, who wasn’t involved in
the study. “I wouldn’t go to a person who recommended supplements
and told me to go off chemo, or someone who didn’t take the time to
ask what medications I have had so far to treat cancer.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Rl4KtL
Cancer 2015.
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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