Several died with alternative treatment

Many people with cancer seek alternative treatment, most often in addition to the usual treatment. These options include everything from homeopathy, medicine and crystal diets or healing.

A 2013 Norwegian study showed that one-third of those who survived cancer had used alternative treatment, despite the fact that there was no evidence in 1965, research .com wrote about an American study that showed that patients who chose to use alternative therapy had a much higher risk of dying from cancer than those who received regular treatment

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

The same researchers studied exactly that.

The result shows that patients who used an alternative treatment had a slightly higher risk of death than those who used common methods. This is probably due to the fact that people who used alternatives were more likely to withdraw from some traditional treatments, think the researchers.

See also: Cancer patients who only used alternative medicine were at greater risk of dying

Comparative groups similar to

James Yu and his colleagues at Yale School of Medicine used data from nearly two 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 reported 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 only regular treatment, who looked as much as possible about the alternative group.

How could they compare the result for both groups?

Only loaded when patients opted for treatment

The results showed that participants who also used an alternative treatment were more likely to die over a five-year period than patients who used only common methods .

At the same time, the participants of the alternative group also much more often refused to take part in joint 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 also use alternative medications. 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.

See also: One in three patients does not need chemotherapy

I do not know what led to

However, Yu and co recognize that there is some uncertainty associated with their study.

The study is, for example, an observational study – a survey where researchers mapped the therapeutic choices; then linked the choices to the health outcomes. Thus, they may find that alternative treatment is associated with 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 reporting the use of 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 as to the use of an alternative treatment for cancer. However, the two studies conducted by Yale researchers point out that any alternative should not replace some of the conventional treatment.

Reference:

S. B. Johnson, Park HS, CP Gross, JB Yu, Complementary Medicine, Denial of Conventional Cancer Therapy and Survival in Patients with Curable Cancers, JAMA Oncology, July 2018.

This case was published for the first time at Research. not.