Open Research Newcastle
Browse

Complementary and alternative therapies in the palliative setting

Download (376.32 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2025-05-09, 20:27 authored by Jennifer MartinJennifer Martin, Joanne PatelJoanne Patel
Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) encompasses a wide range of medication, herbal, dietary and physical therapies that are not usually considered within the realm of conventional therapeutics. Approximately two thirds of the Australian population use CAMs and only around half of this number will discuss their use of these products with their doctor. Clinical use is commonly seen in patients with life-limiting illness, often because they experience a high burden of symptoms. However, it is also the case that many of these therapies do not have demonstrated efficacy, particularly for the often broad list of conditions and symptoms for which they are chosen to be used. Further, depending on whether they are sold as medications, sold as food supplements or imported illegally and distributed via nonstandard therapeutic channels, several products have had reports of toxicity, severe adverse effects, batch irregularities and drug interactions with other therapies. This awareness, together with lack of standardisation of products and lack of interchangeability between brands has made prescribers unwilling to put patients at risk of harm by supporting their use. In this article, we cover general pharmacological principles around use of a small selection of chemicals used in a medical setting to enable some guidance for use.

History

Journal title

Internal Medicine Journal

Volume

52

Issue

10

Pagination

1657-1848

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Language

  • en, English

College/Research Centre

Faculty of Health and Medicine

School

School of Medicine and Public Health

Rights statement

© 2022 The Authors. Internal Medicine Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Royal Australasian College of Physicians. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Usage metrics

    Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC