Complementary therapies offer patients integrated
care
By Saul Wisnia
Laureen DeAngelis has augmented her traditional care at Dana-Farber with acupuncture treatment provided by Weidong Lu, LicAc.
When Laureen DeAngelis was 19 and in her final year of nursing school, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Her treatment at Rhode Island Hospital included chemotherapy and radiation, along with the removal of her spleen during a relapse several years later. The cancer eventually went into remission, but DeAngelis remembers feeling that even with her own health-care background and the support provided by her treatment team, there was little she could do to help herself through the ordeal but tough it out.
Fast forward more than three decades, and DeAngelis is back receiving therapy — this time as a breast cancer patient at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. While many people would be discouraged by a second diagnosis, DeAngelis says she feels "far more empowered" this time around. The difference? The ability to, as she explains, "augment the superb traditional medical care I've received with a holistic approach including acupuncture, yoga, and other complementary therapies" now being offered through DFCI's Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies.
"When I found out I had cancer again, I made a decision to do whatever I could to not become a victim to this disease," adds DeAngelis, of South Kingstown, R.I. "I did not want treatments just delivered to me or at me; I wanted to be an active part of my healing team. Dana-Farber and the Zakim Center have given me that opportunity by fitting complementary therapy into my medical regimen during and after my chemotherapy. These treatments helped me cope and gave me strength."
"I wanted to be an active part of my healing team. These treatments helped me cope and gave me strength."
— Laureen DeAngelis, Dana-Farber patient
Better informed through the Internet and other media sources about the myriad health-care options open to them, Americans facing illnesses such as cancer are looking outside "traditional" Western medicine in record numbers. For many, complementary therapies such as acupuncture, massage, and meditation are proving especially popular. Defined by the American Cancer Society (ACS) as "therapies that patients use along with conventional medicine," they have been shown to relieve symptoms and improve quality of life by lessening the side effects of conventional treatments and/or providing psychological and physical benefits.
Yet, despite the positive experiences of patients like DeAngelis, complementary therapy has its skeptics. Acupuncture and other techniques have been practiced in China for thousands of years, but the lack of hard scientific data supporting their advantages has left many in the Western medical community doubting their effectiveness. Until very recently, even those patients who practiced or understood complementary therapies often avoided discussing them with their doctors for fear of not being taken seriously. "There has been a complete evolution in culture since I had Hodgkin's," explains DeAngelis. "I knew about acupuncture back then and even explored trying yoga, but I would never bring it up to my doctors because it didn't have an accepted role in cancer therapy. It was considered quackery."
This is no exaggeration. During the 1960s, the ACS group set up to study complementary and alternative therapy (unproven treatments used by patients instead of conventional methods) was actually called the "Committee on Quackery." Its name changed over time, and a move toward greater acceptance took place at the highest levels. In 1998, the federal government established a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a $50 million budget. The ACS estimates that Americans spend more than $34 billion annually on complementary and alternative treatment methods with hundreds marketed specifically to people with cancer — so the move seems entirely justified.
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