Cancer Survivors Often Turn to Complementary Medicine
By Charles Bankhead
ATLANTA, 5 aug 2008-- Complementary medicine, primarily related to faith and spirituality, is used by more than 60% of cancer survivors, according to an American Cancer Society study.
Prayer and spiritual practice were cited by 61.4% of more than 4,000 cancer survivors who participated in a survey, Ted Gansler, M.D., of the society's health promotions division, and colleagues reported online in Cancer.
More than 40% of the survey participants mentioned use of relaxation, faith or spiritual healing, and nutritional supplements or vitamins. By contrast, use of hypnosis, biofeedback, and acupuncture was reported by 1% or fewer of the cancer survivors.
"These findings may be used by clinicians and researchers to inform their decisions regarding which [forms of complementary medicine] to address and research," the authors concluded.
They added that population-based data such as provided by their study "are needed to help focus nationwide research priorities on the most widely used [forms of complementary medicine], to assess their effectiveness in improving survivors' quality of life."
Several studies have documented widespread use of complementary medicine by cancer patients. However, most studies have focused on the treatment period, the authors said. Relatively little data have addressed use of complementary medicine "along the cancer continuum."
The authors examined data from the ACS Study of Cancer Survivors-I database. The study included 4,139 survivors of 10 types of cancer. Breast (24.6%), prostate (19.7%), and colorectal (14.7%) cancer accounted for a majority of the study population.
The patients were surveyed 10 to 24 months after diagnosis. The survey included questions related to the use of 19 different kinds of complementary medicine.
In addition to prayer or spiritual practice, commonly reported forms of complementary medicine included:
Relaxation, 44.3%
Faith/spiritual healing, 42.4%
Nutritional supplements/vitamins, 40.1%
Meditation, 15%
Religious counseling, 11.3%
Massage, 11.2%
Support groups, 9.7%
The authors grouped the 19 complementary medicine practices into five domains and found that mind/body practices accounted for 74.4% of the use of complementary medicine. When the authors subdivided that category, they found that religious/spiritual practices were reported by 64.6% of the study participants and other mind/body practices by 51.9%. Practices in the alternative medicine domain were the least common (2.9%).
Use of complementary medicine differed by type of cancer. Survivors of melanoma and kidney cancer were least likely to use complementary medicine, whereas survivors of breast and ovarian cancer were most likely.
A multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that use of complementary medicine was associated with female sex, younger age, higher income, white race, and more education.
Use of spiritual/religious mind-body complementary methods (faith/spiritual healing, prayer/spiritual practice, and religious counseling) was higher in African Americans than in non-Hispanic whites, Hispanics, and other races (75.8% versus 63.8%, 64.5%, and 64.3%).
This pattern was repeated for nonspiritual/religious mind-body practices (aromatherapy, art therapy, support group attendance, biofeedback therapy, hypnosis, imagery/visualization, meditation, and relaxation); 63% of African Americans reported using at least one of these complementary methods compared with 51.1% of whites and 45.4% of Hispanics.
The authors noted that the results may suffer from response bias and omissions from the list of complementary methods (e.g., exercise and chiropractic) may have led to underestimation of aggregate use.
The authors reported no disclosures.
Primary source: CancerSource reference:Gansler T, et al "A population-based study of prevalence of complementary methods used by cancer survivors. A report from the American Cancer Society's Studies of Cancer Survivors" Cancer 2008; 113: 1048-1057.
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