Complementary medicines may put cancer patients' lives at risk
Back to Topic
Click to Print
Useful Websites
Glossary Term Selection
Recent German research found that more than 70% of people with cancer supplement their regular hospital treatment with complementary and alternative medicine. More worryingly, many do so without advising their doctor.
This is important because interactions of the complementary medicines and their regular drugs could make cancer treatment ineffective, or worse still, cause toxic side-effects that could lead to death.
The study found a high degree of complementary medicine use by people with cancer across all age groups, and higher use among women than men. A small percentage (8%) of cancer patients were found to only use complementary medicines and shun conventional treatment.
A separate study also found that many parents of children with cancer (30%) also reported giving complementary medicines to their kids.
Studies in the United States, and across other European countries, found similarly high rates of complementary medicine use among cancer patients. Research of this sort has...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites
