People Who Choose Complementary Medicine Over Traditional Cancer Treatment are More Likely to Die, Yale Study Finds

To understand what factors drove people to choose complementary and alternative medicine, and how these treatments affected their overall survival, Yu and his colleagues looked at information collected from 1.9 billion people in the National Cancer Database. They found that people who chose complementary medicine for their cancer treatment were more likely to be female, younger, more affluent, well-educated, and privately insured.

"This is kind of like the anti-vaccine crowd in a way," Yu tells SurvivorNet. "My guess is that when faced with a tough decision like a cancer diagnosis or cancer treatment, these are patients who are wondering if there's another way."

People who chose complementary medicine were also more likely to refuse some conventional treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and hormone therapy, Yu says. And unfortunately, these people had a two-fold greater risk of death compared with patients who did not use complementary medicine.

But Yu does not completely discourage his patients from using complementary medicine. Instead, he says patients should bring any treatments they take or are thinking of taking to their doctor's appointment, or get an opinion from a registered dietician. Yu stresses that as long as complementary therapies are not interfering with conventional medicines, and they help make patients feel better, it should be okay to take these therapies to improve your quality of life. "The placebo effect is certainly very powerful," Yu says. "And we need to do a better job listening to our patients and integrating all recommended therapy with the patient's hopes and desires, and dreams."

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