How do you counsel young and educated patients with non-metastatic breast cancer who choose non-proven "natural" treatments over standard therapy?

It is extremely difficult to persuade individuals skeptical of medicine to make evidence-based decisions. Most research related to changing scientific beliefs come from literature related to antivaccination attitudes. Previous research has suggested that provaccine messages about safety (messages co...

Patients have autonomy to make their own choices, of course, so I put my efforts into patient education so that they can make informed decisions.

To educate, I need to know what the patient's understanding of the disease is and her motivations for choosing one treatment strategy or another. For exa...

As someone who has watched patients die due to their choice of “natural” treatment, the one major piece of advice I can give you is that belief in these products will often approach that of a religious conviction.

As a result, one must be cautious in criticizing their decision. The best option, whe...

I agree with the excellent responses above. I believe the first and foremost thing is to be non-judgemental, I often say "I don't know enough about alternative medicine but given my expertise in evidence-based anti-cancer treatments, I would recommend such and such treatment".

I do discuss the paper...

These are tough discussions, but I generally present them with data that shows what happens when we do no treatment (believe it or not this data includes 250 cases from 1805-1933), surgery versus nothing, and this paper that compares CAM with treatment/no treatment, all for breast cancer.

I agree w...

This is very common and I try to be as clear as possible and unambiguous. Sometimes patients ask because they are told about these alternatives by a relative or a friend and they really want to get expert advice from their oncologist. Other times, they are more inclined to go that route and want to ...