It may be best not to go off-script when it comes to breast cancer.
Roughly 1 in 8 US women are expected to be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer at some point. It’s the most common cancer in women, excluding skin cancers.
Treatment typically involves a multi-pronged approach — surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, hormone therapy or targeted drug therapy to kill cancer cells.
Now, researchers are sounding the alarm about the rise of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) for breast cancer, which appears to be leading to much higher mortality rates.
Alternative treatments are non-mainstream tools that often include massage, acupuncture, dietary supplements and mind-body practices to manage side effects and ease stress.
For the new study in JAMA Network Open, researchers divided over 2 million breast cancer patients into four groups based on their treatment protocol — traditional therapies, CAM, combination treatment or no treatment.
Less than 0.1% of women chose CAM, but those who did were about four times more likely to die from breast cancer than those who received conventional cancer treatments.
The five-year survival rate with CAM was 60.1%, compared with 85.4% for traditional therapy.
The CAM survival rates were very similar to those who refused any form of treatment.
Even combining CAM with standard therapy was linked to higher mortality, as these women were more likely to skip or refuse essential medical treatments like radiation or hormone therapy.
While overall cancer survival rates are the highest they’ve ever been, life-threatening breast cancer diagnoses are spiking in women younger than 50.
The good news is that there have been several rapid advances in cancer treatments over the years, including a “smart bomb” drug that may be better than chemotherapy alone for those diagnosed with advanced triple-negative breast cancer.
Nevertheless, CAM use is growing among breast cancer patients.
It may be higher than researchers calculated since patients may be reluctant to discuss alternative approaches with their doctors.
The study authors hope their findings show a need for improved communication between patients and healthcare providers to ensure patients receive comprehensive information on alternative treatments.
