Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use among patients with cancer undergoing palliative care: A pilot study of a single institution in Poland.

178 Background: Real life observations suggest CAM is frequently used by cancer patients. The profound knowledge of CAM use details is crucial for both efficacy and safety of anticancer and supportive therapy. Methods: Semi-structured pilot questionnaire about details of CAM use was presented to all 202 consecutive patients of Palliative Care Outpatient Clinic, E. Dutkiewicz SAC Hospice, Gdańsk, Poland (April-22 and September-30/2016). After excluding 112 patients (no-responders group = N-RES) due to low performance status (N = 64), lack of written agreement (n = 10), diagnosis of non-malignant disease (N = 26), others (N = 12), the final analysis included 90 patients (female: 72,0%, median age: 63,5, range: 24-94 yrs) with advanced cancer (responders = RES). Demographic and clinical data were collected at the same time, then statistically related to CAM use details. Results: RES patients were significantly younger (p = 0,0045) and in better performance status (p < 0,05) as compared to N-RES group (no difference with regard to gender, education level, primary cancer location, duration of malignant disease, marital status). Since the primary cancer diagnosis, CAM was used by 56 (62,2%) RES patients and mostly included vitamin/mineral formulations (36,7%), herbs (32,2%), alternative nutrition (24,4%), music therapy (11,1%) and Chinese medicine (5,6%). The main reasons for CAM use were: to enhance the effects of anticancer therapy (48,9%), to treat its side-effects (15,6%) or the lack of conventional therapy possibilities (5,6%). CAM was used more frequently by patients who experienced weight loss since diagnosis of cancer (p = 0,0028) or those who used CAM methods to control symptoms not related to cancer (p = 0,0109); age, gender, education level, marital status, religious practices frequency were not significantly related to CAM use. Conclusions: 1) CAM use is common among patients with advanced cancer under palliative care; 2) some factors might be in relation to higher CAM use (weight loss, CAM use to control symptoms not related to cancer); 3) further research is required to investigate better different aspects of CAM use such as safety, efficacy and outcomes in this population.