NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Insured cancer patients in the State of Washington are considerably more likely to use complementary and alternative medical providers than are insured patients without the disease, researchers report in the February 23rd online edition of Cancer. But such providers are not replacing conventional ones.

Dr. William E. Lafferty of the University of Washington, Seattle and colleagues note that insurance coverage of such therapy is increasing. In fact, Washington State requires that insurers cover visits to licensed alternative practitioners. However, little is known about usage by cancer patients.

To investigate, the researchers examined Washington State insurance claims data for the year 2000. From a total of 357,709 claimants, they identified 7915 with cancer.

Of this group, 7.1% had made a claim for naturopathy, acupuncture or massage and 11.6% had made a claim for chiropractic treatment.

As Dr. Lafferty told Reuters Health, "the use of naturopathic medicine was twice the level for patients with cancer compared to patients without cancer."

"This use was greatest in patients receiving chemotherapy and in patients with metastatic illness. In fact, over 12% of women receiving chemotherapy saw a naturopathic physician during the year."

Overall, use of acupuncture was 1.4 times higher than that of claimants without cancer. However, employment of chiropractors was less common (odds ratio 0.9) than that of other claimants.

Factors associated with alternative therapy use--in particular employment of naturopaths--were being female, having metastatic cancer, hematological malignancy and use of chemotherapy.

Indeed, added Dr. Lafferty, "the combined use of naturopathy, acupuncture and massage was almost 16% in women who had received chemotherapy during the year."

Furthermore, he concluded, "the overall bills for alternative therapy were relatively small in comparison to the billed amount for conventional care, ranging from 1 to 2% of the total medical bills."

"Thus, alternative care is used as an adjunct to conventional care," he said. "Virtually no patients in the study received alternative care alone."

Cancer 2004

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