Alternative medicine can be defined as treatments provided by non-medical personnel that are not scientifically proven to be effective. If alternative medicine was proven to work, it would simply be called “medicine”.
While alternative medicine may not be directly dangerous, they can be dangerous when they are chosen in favor of conventional medical treatment.
This observational study compared the survival rate of cancer patients who used alternative medicine or conventional cancer treatment.
As expected, the chance for survival was significantly lower for alternative medicine (a shorter survival rate just means that patients who used alternative medicine lived shorter on average).
Surprisingly, the people that chose alternative medicine were younger, had higher income and even had higher education.
The authors discuss that the communication between patients and caregivers needs to improve and that research should look into why people choose alternative medicine.
This was an observational study, meaning that a direct cause-and-effect relationship cannot be proved. However, it would be very difficult and even unethical to investigate this research question in a randomized controlled trial.
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