CAM use highly prevalent among patients with thyroid cancer

International Thyroid Congress

PARIS — More than 80% of patients with thyroid cancer report using some form of complementary and alternative medicine therapy, Boston University Medical Center researchers found.

However, for 18% of patients who responded to a survey, their complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use was neither known nor prescribed by their physician, nor did their physician ask about CAM use.

“Patients with thyroid cancer used CAM therapies twice as often as the general American population,”Jennifer E. Rosen, MD, of the department of surgery at Boston University Medical Center, said during a presentation here at the International Thyroid Congress. “Physicians who treat patients with thyroid cancer should be aware of these data to further assist in their assessment and care.”

The results are based on survey responses from 1,326 patients with thyroid cancer. The respondents were 46 years old, on average, were mostly women (84%) and white (90%), and papillary thyroid cancer was the most common diagnosis (83%).

Only about 7% of the survey respondents reporting using no form of CAM.

Multivitamins (41.8%) and prayer (35.3%) were the two most commonly used forms of CAM therapy. This has also been reported for CAM use in the general U.S. population, Rosen said. Excluding prayer and multivitamin use, the five most commonly used CAM practice therapies were massage (33.7%), chiropraxy (27.9%), yoga (22.3%), meditation (17.8%) and acupuncture (13.6%). The five most commonly used CAM biologic therapies were herbal tea (23.6%), special diets (23.2%), herbal supplements (18.4%), homeopathy (14.7%) and ginger (9.5%).

An interesting finding, according to Rosen, was that 21 respondents used kelp, often for symptoms of thyroid cancer. This subgroup also tended to use an average of eight other CAM modalities.

When the researchers excluded prayer and multivitamins from the overall results, 67.5% of patients used some form of CAM therapy during the past 12 months. CAM was most often used to treat thyroid cancer symptoms, by 69.1% of respondents, but a significant proportion (30.9%) used CAM as part of their thyroid cancer treatment.

More than half of the respondents used CAM more than 10 times in the past year. “It comes as no surprise that the biologic therapies, which most commonly are prescribed daily to weekly, were used far more frequently compared to the practice therapies,” Rosen said.

However, according to the researchers, most patients spent an average of $20 per month on CAM therapies, and 12.4% spent more than $100 per month.

“Another interesting finding was that two-thirds of patients felt that their CAM use was helpful, and one-third felt it had no effect, but a significant 1.3% felt that their use actually had a bad effect on their treatment,” she said.

As of the presentation, the researchers have gathered data on up to 1,700 respondents. They plan to share those data at a later date. – by Katie Kalvaitis

For more information:

Rosen JE. OC-149. Presented at: the 14th International Thyroid Congress; Sept. 11-16, 2010; Paris.

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