Clinical oncologist Dr Eznal Iswadi Mahidin from Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL) said it was quite common to see patients diagnosed with cancer choosing not to start with the conventional treatment as prescribed by their doctors but going with alternative or traditional medicine instead, Bernama reported.
He said many patients want to try it for a few months before doing a CT scan, and will only follow his advice if the cancer does not respond to the alternative or traditional medicine.
“So we end up seeing patients three months (later), and they have progressed from stage 2 to either stages 3 or 4,” he was quoted as saying.
According to Eznal, there is no issue over the availability of the required treatment for cancer patients, as some of them refuse conventional treatment even when told that it could be given from the next day.
The Malaysian Study on Cancer Survival, published in 2018 by the national cancer registry department, found that the five-year survival rate, which tracks how many cancer patients are alive after five years since diagnosis, is 66.8% for breast cancer, and 56.8% for colon cancer.
Meanwhile, China’s five-year survival rate for breast cancer is 80.4%.
According to the national cancer registry, between 2012 and 2016, breast cancer represented the highest number of cases among women, while for men it was colon cancer. The latest five-year study is expected to come out this year.
However, Sunway Medical Centre Velocity (SMCV) consultant oncologist Dr Hafizah Zaharah Ahmad disagreed on the issue of patients opting for alternative or traditional medine.
She said less than 5% of her patients choose to go for alternative or traditional medicine after diagnosis.
She admitted though, that the number may be due to selection bias, as patients who go to private hospitals for medical treatment tend to be motivated to get better.
Meanwhile, HKL clinical oncologist Dr Tang Shir Ley noted that about a third of their cancer patients opt for alternative or traditional medicine, or sometimes, no treatment at all, out of fear of surgery and the stigma against chemotherapy.
She said people share horror stories about the side effects of chemotherapy, although most patients do not have major problems, and some also do not consider the type of cancer and its stage when talking about side effects.
“They attribute the patients’ illness to the treatment instead of the cancer itself,” Tang said, according to Bernama.
She said that fear drives patients to alternative and traditional medicine, such as herbal concoctions with supposed anti-cancer properties.
“If (the alternative medicine) worked, we would have prescribed it,” she said, adding that beginning treatment as soon as possible is cheaper for public hospital patients as stage 1 cancer treatment is subsidised by the government.