Praying correlates with higher quality of life: results from a survey on complementary/alternative medicine use among a group of Brazilian cancer patients

São Paulo Medical Journal

Edgar Santiago Valesin Filho¹  Heloisa Prado Soares¹  Fabio Lewin¹  Eliana Sueco Tibana Samano¹  Lia de Melo Ribeiro¹  Patricia Taschner Goldenstein¹  Auro del Giglio¹ 

[1] Faculdade de Medicina do ABC;

关键词: Alternative medicine;    Cancer;    Quality of life;   

DOI  :  10.1590/S1516-31802004000200005

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

CONTEXT: The use of complementary/alternative medicine has been little studied in Brazil. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of complementary/alternative medicine use among a group of Brazilian cancer patients and correlate these findings with the patients' quality of life. TYPE OF STUDY: Descriptive. SETTING: Oncology Institute of the Faculdade de Medicina do ABC, Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil. PARTICIPANTS: 100 cancer patients. PROCEDURES: The EORTC QLQ C-30 quality of life questionnaire was applied together with another questionnaire on the use of complementary/alternative medicine. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Use of complementary/alternative medicine and quality of life. RESULTS: 89% of the patients had already used complementary/alternative medicine, 63% were currently using it and most of them (77.7%) believed in the efficacy of complementary/alternative medicine for their treatment. The type most used was individual prayer (77.5%). We found a significant association between believing in the efficacy of complementary/alternative medicine and praying (individually or in groups), in comparison with better scores on the functional (p = 0.001) and overall health (p = 0.001) quality of life scales. Multivariate analysis confirmed these findings regarding praying and also showed that believing in complementary/alternative medicine correlated significantly with functional and symptom quality of life scores. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of complementary/alternative medicine use in this group of cancer patients was high. Praying and belief in the efficacy of complementary/alternative medicine correlated significantly with an overall better quality of life, and therefore these practices should not be discouraged by physicians. New prospective studies should be conducted in order to better characterize the efficacy of such alternative therapeutic approaches.

【 授权许可】

Unknown