Alternative oncology
Cancer treatment with "alternative" methods doubled the patient's risk of death
Natalia Pelezneva, Naked Science
Scientists from the Yale School of Medicine found out that patients with oncological diseases using methods of "alternative" medicine in addition to traditional therapy died of cancer more often than those who followed only standard treatment.
According to the researchers, supporters of "alternative" methods are more likely to refuse additional procedures that have proven their effectiveness, so mortality in this group is higher. The article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Oncology (Johnson et al., Complementary Medicine, Refusal of Conventional Cancer Therapy, and Survival Among Patients With Curable Cancers).
This work confirmed the results of earlier studies by the same group of scientists. In 2017, they concluded that the complete rejection of standard therapy in favor of "alternative" medicine significantly reduces the five-year survival rate of patients.
In the new work, scientists analyzed the National Cancer Database (NCDB), which includes information about patients from about 1,500 American medical centers. For the study, we selected data on patients who, between 2004 and 2013, were diagnosed with one of the four most common types of cancer in the United States: breast, prostate, lung, or colorectal cancer.
258 study participants supplemented standard therapy with methods of "alternative" medicine, including taking homeopathic remedies or herbal supplements, or engaged in breathing exercises or yoga. The effectiveness of these methods in the treatment of cancer has not been proven by clinical studies: many of them can alleviate the psychological state of the patient, but they do not affect the development of the disease. The control group included 1,032 patients who followed only proven methods of treatment – chemotherapy, radiation therapy and hormone therapy.
Survival rates / © JAMA Oncol.
All study participants started treatment with standard methods on time, but adherents of "alternative" methods of treatment were much more likely to refuse additional procedures proposed by the doctor with proven effectiveness (for example, repeated courses of chemotherapy or radiation therapy). More than 7 years after the diagnosis, about 85% of supporters of standard treatment and only 70% of those who resorted to alternative medicine lived. Also, the use of non-classical approaches more often led to death, when modeling, the ratio of mortality risks in the "alternative" group was 2.08.
Previously, experts from the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) they told about a homeopathic preparation based on belladonna components, which affected about 400 children.
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