Healthnotes Newswire (August 31, 2000)—Cancer patients who use complementary and alternative medicine are not any less likely to undergo conventional medical therapies, according to a study published this month in the journal Cancer.¹

In this new study, 172 Austrian cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy filled out a questionnaire asking about use of and interest in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Of those who responded, 24% reported using CAM therapies, and another 31% reported being interested in trying these methods. Multivitamin therapy, herbal medicine, and homeopathy were the treatments most often used. Patients who reported using CAM treatments were similar to the rest of the respondents in measures of psychological disturbance, compliance with conventional treatment, and trust for their oncologist.

CAM use among cancer patients has ranged from 7 to 64% in different studies,² depending on where the study was performed, how CAM was defined, and possibly how comfortable patients were disclosing their use of CAM treatments to their practitioners. Many medical doctors have looked at nonconventional cancer treatments with concern,³ in part because of the possibility that CAM treatments could interfere with the actions of,⁴ or even cause patients to abandon, conventional treatments. In fact, one study found that 40% of cancer patients using CAM treatments discontinued conventional therapies.⁵ Other studies, however, have agreed with this new study, showing that compliance with conventional therapy was similar in those who pursued CAM treatments and those who did not.^{6 7}

These data appear to refute the findings of a paper published last year that concluded that women who seek alternative treatments for breast cancer are more anxious about their condition than women who do not use CAM.⁸ The patients using CAM in the new study did not report any more or less psychological distress than those who did not use these therapies. Other studies comparing the mental health of users and nonusers of CAM have had mixed results, with some showing increased anxiety in CAM users⁹ and others showing no difference.¹⁰

Unfortunately, none of the studies mentioned above evaluated whether any of the CAM treatments actually work. Studies on CAM therapies for cancer are very limited, and most are only preliminary.^{11 12} There is an urgent need for CAM therapies to be tested in large, well-designed studies, so that cancer patients and their doctors will know what works and what does not.