Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies
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Focus Alternat Complement Ther©2005 Pharmaceutical Press
Focus Altern Complement Ther 1997; 2: 191
Spontaneous remmission (SR) of cancer is a rare event in oncology, but there is no more doubt on the validity of the observation. SR is an “en vogue” issue in the popular media and we wanted to collect data on the epidemiology of SR and the patients’ causal attributions.
A documentation form for SR to be sent to our study group was attached to a best-selling book on Spontaneous Recovery. Reports on putative SR were evaluated in respect to the validity of the remission, therapeutic methods involved, and the patients’ causal attributions.
The low return rate of SR registry forms (~0.2%) underscored the rarity of the phenomenon. SR could be confirmed in few cases (~10%). Most remissions could be explained as a result of conventional oncological therapies, but the majority of patients related their favourable disease outcome to concurrent or sequential unconventional treatments.
Subjective illness paradigms of patients with cancer apparently play an essential role for their choice of complementary treatments and their causal attributions in respect to the disease outcome.
