NEW YORK (Reuters
Health) - Cancer patients who use alternative medicines are no
more likely than other cancer patients to stop their standard
treatments, results of an Austrian survey show.
In fact, the
researchers who conducted the survey report that patients who
used the alternative or complementary medicines tended to have
good coping skills and demonstrated a willingness to follow through
on conventional treatments.
``Many oncologists
fear that use of complementary and alternative medicine may lead
patients to abandon medical treatment,'' according to Dr. Wolfgang
Sollner from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and colleagues.
``In our study, patients who used complementary and alternative
medicine...expressed as high a trust in conventional medicine
and showed as high compliance with radiotherapy as patients not
interested in complementary and alternative medicine.''
The investigators
administered questionnaires to 172 patients having radiotherapy
treatment for their cancer. Overall, 24% of patients had used
complementary and alternative medicine, while the majority--nearly
69% of patients--had never used these methods. The most common
alternative methods used by the subjects were intake of multivitamins,
herbs and homeopathy.
In general,
the patients who were inclined to use complementary and alternative
medicine were younger and had a more advanced stage of their illness,
the report indicates. This makes sense, the authors note, as ``younger
patients with progressive disease and worse prognosis are prone
to use 'every method available' to influence the course of cancer.''
In addition,
those who practiced complementary and alternative medicine had
a higher level of disease coping skills--they had a greater tendency
to solve problems and seek information than those who did not
report having such an interest.
This evidence
suggests that complementary and alternative medicines may offer
cancer patients a way of ``avoiding passivity and of coping with
feelings of hopelessness,'' Sollner's group concludes.
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