Attitudes and beliefs of paediatric oncologists regarding complementary and alternative therapies

SummaryThe last decades have seen increasing patient use of complementary and alternative treatment methods (CAM) in paediatric oncology, too. However, there have been few scientific studies of paediatric oncologists’ views and attitudes on CAM to date.We report the results of a cross-sectional questionnaire survey amongst paediatric oncologists in Germany. In addition to descriptive statistics, dichotomous subgroups were formed and univariate and multivariate analyses performed.There were 175 evaluable questionnaires (response rate 26.5%). Almost half of the responders (48%) had not been taught anything about CAM at medical school. Knowledge about CAM was found significantly more often in younger doctors (<43 years), in doctors who brought up the subject of CAM with the parents and in doctors working in non-university hospitals with fewer than 50 new admissions per year. A little over half of the responders (56%) had never used CAM when they had been ill themselves. Most of the doctors (78.9%) agreed fully or somewhat with the statement “CAM should be used after completion of the conventional treatment”. Older doctors agreed significantly more often that CAM should be used after failure of the conventional treatment. Paediatric oncologists were worried about CAM use by their patients because of possible interactions (76%) or side-effects (65.7%), additional costs (75.4%), possible prevention or delay of conventional treatment (68%) and their own lack of competence to provide advice. The topic of CAM was raised at the first consultation by 41.1% of the responders. A wish for more continuing medical education on CAM was expressed by 85.2%.In summary, the data presented here indicate that the majority of the responding German paediatric oncologists is open towards continuing medical education on CAM, not least in the interest of becoming more competent to advise their patients. This is in contrast to the fact that German paediatric oncologists currently tend not to actively bring up the topic of CAM in their consultations with parents. Younger doctors with shorter professional experience in paediatric oncology currently have a fundamentally more positive attitude towards CAM issues.