Cargando…
Building an Integrative Outpatient Care Program for Breast Cancer Patients in Taiwan
Background. Breast cancer patients may experience various symptoms that affect the quality of life significantly and they seek complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). To meet the needs of patients, we developed an integrative outpatient care program. Methods. This program provided CAM consulta...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2015
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739177/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26453537 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1534735415607630 |
_version_ | 1783287820811501568 |
---|---|
author | Lin, Yi-Hsien Shiu, Jing-Huei Chen, Fang-Pey Chiu, Jen-Hwey |
author_facet | Lin, Yi-Hsien Shiu, Jing-Huei Chen, Fang-Pey Chiu, Jen-Hwey |
author_sort | Lin, Yi-Hsien |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background. Breast cancer patients may experience various symptoms that affect the quality of life significantly and they seek complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). To meet the needs of patients, we developed an integrative outpatient care program. Methods. This program provided CAM consultation and acupuncture for breast cancer patients at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. The outcome measures included Medical Outcomes Study 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12) and patient satisfaction questionnaires on the first visit (baseline) and at 6 months. Results. Forty-five breast cancer patients were enrolled. All patients completed the study. The median age was 53.3 (±8.3). The symptoms most often experienced during previous cancer treatments were fatigue (35.6%), arthralgia (20%), nausea (6.7%), and insomnia (6.7%). The symptoms most wished to be diminished by the patients were arthralgia (22.2%), insomnia (17.8%), and fatigue (15.6%). Thirty-four patients (75.6%) had sought CAM therapy to reduce these symptoms. Fifteen patients (33.3%) received CAM consultation only and 30 (66.7%) received acupuncture in addition. Sixteen patients completed at least 6 sessions of acupuncture. No serious adverse effect was reported. In the SF-12 Questionnaire on all the patients, physical component summary (PCS) was 49.6 (±5.6) at baseline and 44.9 (±7.6) at 6 months (P = .001); the mental component summary (MCS) was 44.7 (±6.1) at baseline and 52.3 (±9.3) at 6 months (P < .001). For patients who had completed acupuncture, PCS was 49.2 (±4.9) at baseline and 41.4 (±7.6) at 6 months (P = .148); the MCS was 45.6 (±6.2) at baseline and 49.7 (±11) at 6 months (P = .07). Thirty-eight (84.4%) patients were satisfied with this program. Conclusions. Our results demonstrated that an integrative outpatient care program of conventional and Chinese medicine is feasible. Most patients were satisfied with this program and the quality of life was improved. It is important to conduct more research to build a model that integrates CAM with conventional medicine in Taiwan. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5739177 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57391772018-01-10 Building an Integrative Outpatient Care Program for Breast Cancer Patients in Taiwan Lin, Yi-Hsien Shiu, Jing-Huei Chen, Fang-Pey Chiu, Jen-Hwey Integr Cancer Ther Articles Background. Breast cancer patients may experience various symptoms that affect the quality of life significantly and they seek complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). To meet the needs of patients, we developed an integrative outpatient care program. Methods. This program provided CAM consultation and acupuncture for breast cancer patients at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. The outcome measures included Medical Outcomes Study 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12) and patient satisfaction questionnaires on the first visit (baseline) and at 6 months. Results. Forty-five breast cancer patients were enrolled. All patients completed the study. The median age was 53.3 (±8.3). The symptoms most often experienced during previous cancer treatments were fatigue (35.6%), arthralgia (20%), nausea (6.7%), and insomnia (6.7%). The symptoms most wished to be diminished by the patients were arthralgia (22.2%), insomnia (17.8%), and fatigue (15.6%). Thirty-four patients (75.6%) had sought CAM therapy to reduce these symptoms. Fifteen patients (33.3%) received CAM consultation only and 30 (66.7%) received acupuncture in addition. Sixteen patients completed at least 6 sessions of acupuncture. No serious adverse effect was reported. In the SF-12 Questionnaire on all the patients, physical component summary (PCS) was 49.6 (±5.6) at baseline and 44.9 (±7.6) at 6 months (P = .001); the mental component summary (MCS) was 44.7 (±6.1) at baseline and 52.3 (±9.3) at 6 months (P < .001). For patients who had completed acupuncture, PCS was 49.2 (±4.9) at baseline and 41.4 (±7.6) at 6 months (P = .148); the MCS was 45.6 (±6.2) at baseline and 49.7 (±11) at 6 months (P = .07). Thirty-eight (84.4%) patients were satisfied with this program. Conclusions. Our results demonstrated that an integrative outpatient care program of conventional and Chinese medicine is feasible. Most patients were satisfied with this program and the quality of life was improved. It is important to conduct more research to build a model that integrates CAM with conventional medicine in Taiwan. SAGE Publications 2015-10-09 2016-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5739177/ /pubmed/26453537 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1534735415607630 Text en © The Author(s) 2015 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Articles Lin, Yi-Hsien Shiu, Jing-Huei Chen, Fang-Pey Chiu, Jen-Hwey Building an Integrative Outpatient Care Program for Breast Cancer Patients in Taiwan |
title | Building an Integrative Outpatient Care Program for Breast Cancer Patients in Taiwan |
title_full | Building an Integrative Outpatient Care Program for Breast Cancer Patients in Taiwan |
title_fullStr | Building an Integrative Outpatient Care Program for Breast Cancer Patients in Taiwan |
title_full_unstemmed | Building an Integrative Outpatient Care Program for Breast Cancer Patients in Taiwan |
title_short | Building an Integrative Outpatient Care Program for Breast Cancer Patients in Taiwan |
title_sort | building an integrative outpatient care program for breast cancer patients in taiwan |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739177/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26453537 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1534735415607630 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT linyihsien buildinganintegrativeoutpatientcareprogramforbreastcancerpatientsintaiwan AT shiujinghuei buildinganintegrativeoutpatientcareprogramforbreastcancerpatientsintaiwan AT chenfangpey buildinganintegrativeoutpatientcareprogramforbreastcancerpatientsintaiwan AT chiujenhwey buildinganintegrativeoutpatientcareprogramforbreastcancerpatientsintaiwan |