For any treatment, we recommend that you ask the provider the following questions:Can this treatment:
- Support the immune or other systems of the patient?
- Counteract the cancer?
- Enable the conventional treatment to work better?
- Relieve symptoms or side effects?
- What are the training and credentials of the provider?
- Does the provider believe in this treatment because he/she has seen benefits with similar patients?
- If so, would it be possible to speak to some of these patients?
- Have results of this treatment been published in any recognized medical journals?
- Can the provider give you any references published by others?
- What is the treatment?
- How will you know that the therapy is or is not working?
- Are there potential side effects?
- Is the provider willing to communicate with the patient’s primary care physician?
(*Adapted from recommended questions by the American Cancer Society and from the article, Recommendations to MDs on Counseling Patients’ Use of Alternative Medicine, by David Eisenberg. Annals of Internal Medicine, Vol. 127, No. 1, pp. 61-69.)
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