CAM for cancer?

Excerpt

This issue brings us two surveys of cancer patients’ use of complementary/alternative medicine (CAM). Tam et al. [1] found that 47% of Hong Kong patients with gynaecological cancers used some form of CAM. Patients who insisted on a second opinion within conventional oncology were six times more likely to use CAM. Worryingly, the results also suggest that 80% of CAM users failed to inform their oncological team about their CAM use. The second survey by Yoshimura et al. [2] reveals exactly the same prevalence of CAM use in patients with urological cancers in Japan (47%). The data demonstrate that the cost for CAM was often considerable. At 1-year follow-up, CAM users had lower scores for social function, general health perceptions and vitality than patients who abstained from CAM use. …