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Clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis

MOTIVATION: Cancer patients often use complementary and/or alternative medicine, such as mistletoe therapy, alongside conventional cancer therapies. In Switzerland, so far not much is known about treatment patterns of breast cancer patients using integrative oncology. Solid knowledge on complementar...

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Autores principales: Krüerke, Daniel, Schenker, Marianne, Matter-Walstra, Klazien
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10623842/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37924102
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-023-04219-x
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author Krüerke, Daniel
Schenker, Marianne
Matter-Walstra, Klazien
author_facet Krüerke, Daniel
Schenker, Marianne
Matter-Walstra, Klazien
author_sort Krüerke, Daniel
collection PubMed
description MOTIVATION: Cancer patients often use complementary and/or alternative medicine, such as mistletoe therapy, alongside conventional cancer therapies. In Switzerland, so far not much is known about treatment patterns of breast cancer patients using integrative oncology. Solid knowledge on complementary care utilization may help to enhance integrative oncology care in Switzerland. METHODS: In this exploratory, descriptive database study, we investigated the treatment pathways of a cohort of breast cancer patients who received mistletoe therapy and were documented in the cancer registry of an anthroposophic Swiss hospital offering integrative oncology treatments. RESULTS: Patients treated with mistletoe in this cohort are in median 10 years younger than Swiss breast cancer patients as a whole. Only 5.8% of these patients were treated with mistletoe alone, while 60.5% of them supplemented chemotherapy and/or hormone therapy and/or surgery and/or radiation with mistletoe therapy. Nearly 80% of patients started conventional therapy followed by additional mistletoe therapy or started mono mistletoe therapy after completion of conventional therapies. The median time from initial diagnosis to hospital admission (inpatient and/or outpatient) was less than one year. Almost ¾ of the patients were treated in an outpatient setting only. CONCLUSION: From our data, it appears that younger breast cancer patients are more likely to use mistletoe therapy simultaneously with or following their conventional medical therapies. The extent to which these patients discuss their mistletoe therapy and eventually other complementary and/or alternative therapies with their primary oncologists is not clear from the data. We therefore recommend that (Swiss) oncologists should openly discuss the desire for integrative oncology therapies, especially with their younger breast cancer patients, in order to find the best holistic care pattern for these patients. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12906-023-04219-x.
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spelling pubmed-106238422023-11-04 Clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis Krüerke, Daniel Schenker, Marianne Matter-Walstra, Klazien BMC Complement Med Ther Research MOTIVATION: Cancer patients often use complementary and/or alternative medicine, such as mistletoe therapy, alongside conventional cancer therapies. In Switzerland, so far not much is known about treatment patterns of breast cancer patients using integrative oncology. Solid knowledge on complementary care utilization may help to enhance integrative oncology care in Switzerland. METHODS: In this exploratory, descriptive database study, we investigated the treatment pathways of a cohort of breast cancer patients who received mistletoe therapy and were documented in the cancer registry of an anthroposophic Swiss hospital offering integrative oncology treatments. RESULTS: Patients treated with mistletoe in this cohort are in median 10 years younger than Swiss breast cancer patients as a whole. Only 5.8% of these patients were treated with mistletoe alone, while 60.5% of them supplemented chemotherapy and/or hormone therapy and/or surgery and/or radiation with mistletoe therapy. Nearly 80% of patients started conventional therapy followed by additional mistletoe therapy or started mono mistletoe therapy after completion of conventional therapies. The median time from initial diagnosis to hospital admission (inpatient and/or outpatient) was less than one year. Almost ¾ of the patients were treated in an outpatient setting only. CONCLUSION: From our data, it appears that younger breast cancer patients are more likely to use mistletoe therapy simultaneously with or following their conventional medical therapies. The extent to which these patients discuss their mistletoe therapy and eventually other complementary and/or alternative therapies with their primary oncologists is not clear from the data. We therefore recommend that (Swiss) oncologists should openly discuss the desire for integrative oncology therapies, especially with their younger breast cancer patients, in order to find the best holistic care pattern for these patients. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12906-023-04219-x. BioMed Central 2023-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC10623842/ /pubmed/37924102 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-023-04219-x Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Krüerke, Daniel
Schenker, Marianne
Matter-Walstra, Klazien
Clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis
title Clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis
title_full Clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis
title_fullStr Clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis
title_full_unstemmed Clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis
title_short Clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis
title_sort clinical characteristics and therapeutic behavior of breast cancer patients using mistletoe therapy consulting a clinic offering integrative oncology: a registry data analysis
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10623842/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37924102
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-023-04219-x
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