Title:The effect of Complementary and Alternative Medicines on Quality of Life in patients with Breast Cancer: A systematic review

Introduction & Aim:Classical treatments of cancer have beneficial outcomes but cannot eradicate the disease and often have side effects. These complications remain negative effects in patient s Quality of Life (QOL). Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is a current approach for confrontingthese complications, but available literature reports controversial results on their advantages in QOL of patients with breast cancer. The primary aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the effect of CAM on QOL of patients with breast cancer.Methods:Data source: studies were identified by searching electronic databases (Medline, Embase, Cochrane Central and etc.), reference list of relevant articles and gray literature. All clinical trials using CAMin four categories contain Dietary Supplements, Herbal Medicine, Mind-body techniques and Mix interventions published from 2000 were selected. Data extraction: 2 reviewers independently extracted data including population characteristics, CAM interventions, instruments assessing QOL and their outcomes. The quality of evidence was assessed using PEDro scale.Results: A total 7442 citations were identified. Twelve English clinical trials were included in the review which 7 were RCTs. Participants were patients with breast cancer in primary phase of cancer diagnosis, treatment or rehabilitation. Average point in assessing quality of evidence in all studies was 6. Interventions in most of studies werein mind-body techniques category. Hence, totally Mind-body techniques had more beneficial effects on QOL. Conclusion: Due to heterogeneity of study designs, a meta-analysis was not performed. Therefore deciding in best techniques for improving patients QOL is not feasible. Future high quality RCTs exploring effects of CAM on QOL of patients with breast cancer with well-defined category are required.

کلیدواژه ها:

Complementary medicine ، Alternative medicine ، breast cancer ، Quality of Life