Several cancer patients died with alternative treatment

Many people affected by cancer seek alternative treatment, usually in addition to common treatment for cancer. These options include everything from homeopathy, herbal medicine and crystal remedies or healing.

One-third of those who survived cancer used alternative treatment, despite the lack of evidence that such methods work against cancer.

In 2017, research.no wrote an American study that showed that patients

But what about people who use alternatives in addition to traditional treatment?

Now, the same researchers have studied exactly that.

The result shows that patients who used an alternative treatment had a slightly higher risk of death than those who used only standard methods. Probably because of this, people who have used alternatives have had a greater tendency to withdraw from some parts of traditional treatment, researchers believe

groups compared to

James Yu and his colleagues at Yale School of Medicine. million patients with breast, prostate, lung or colon cancer. Participants had cancerous forms that it is usually possible to cure with regular treatment.

Yu and co read the data and found a group of patients who indicated that they were using an alternative treatment in addition to at least one form of traditional treatment. Subsequently, the researchers found a group of patients on a normal treatment, which looked as much as possible to the alternative group.

How to compare results for both groups The results showed that participants who also used alternative treatment were at greater risk to die over a period of five years compared with patients who used only common methods

. it was also found that participants in the alternative group significantly refused to take part in the usual treatment, such as surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy.

When the researchers took this difference into account, survival was similar in both groups. The team therefore believes that inadequate traditional treatment may explain why patients in the alternative group were at higher risk of dying.

Yu and colleagues report that patients often fail to tell the doctor that they are also using alternative medicines. The researchers believe that it is very important that the doctors themselves take the initiative to talk to their patients of the importance of following all the parts of the traditional treatment.

I do not know what led to

Yu and co recognize that

The study is, for example, an observational study, that is to say a survey in which researchers mapped people's treatment choices and then linked choices to health care outcomes. Thus, they may find that alternative treatment is linked to a higher risk of death.

But they can not say if there is an alternative treatment that presents a higher risk. Perhaps people who initially had less chance of survival were choosing more often to supplement alternative medicine.

The researchers tried to take into account the factors that can differentiate an alternative group from the control group. But they can not be sure of having received all these possible inequalities.

Perhaps a special group

Another thing is that the alternative medicine group used only made up 258 patients. It does not give all the basics of the world. There is reason to believe that the number of people who actually use alternative medicines is much higher.

At the same time, it can be assumed that the group that claims to use alternative medicine may differ from the average in several ways. the risk of death. For example, do they have an unusually high dislike for cancer screening programs or for the treatment of other diseases?

Researchers lack data on many such factors. They also do not know what type of alternative treatment was used by the 258 patients.

There are still many things that are unclear about the use of an alternative treatment for cancer. However, the two studies by Yale researchers point out that any alternative should not replace some of the conventional treatment.

Reference:

S. B. Johnson, H.S. Park, C.P. Gross, J.B. Yu, Complementary Medicine, Refusal of conventional cancer therapy, and survival among patients with curable cancers, JAMA Oncology, July 2018.