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. “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 US 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.”