Peripheral neuropathy — a nerve disorder that can cause weakness, numbness, tingling, and pain — is a common chemotherapy side effect. Treatments are available to help improve your quality of life.
About Herbs, presented by Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Integrative Medicine Service, gives mobile device users a comprehensive guide to botanicals, supplements, complementary therapies, and more.
In the most rigorous analysis of its kind to date, Memorial Sloan-Kettering researchers find acupuncture to be an effective therapy for several types of pain.
Recent studies have shown that acupuncture can help control a number of symptoms and side effects — such as pain, fatigue, dry mouth, nausea, and vomiting — associated with a variety of cancers and their treatments. Experts from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Integrative Medicine Service, who have either conducted or reviewed many of those studies, recommend that cancer patients interested in acupuncture seek a certified or licensed acupuncturist who has training or past experience working with individuals with cancer.
Since 1999, Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Integrative Medicine Service has provided complementary therapies that improve quality of life for Memorial Sloan-Kettering patients by alleviating symptoms of cancer.
While the main goal of medicine is to cure or control disease, there is an increasing need for attention and resources to be directed to addressing issues such as pain and symptom relief — conditions directly related to a patient’s quality of life during treatment. More than twenty-five years ago, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center was the first cancer hospital to create a pain and palliative care service. Today, the service continues to work to relieve, or palliate, the pain and distress that may be experienced by cancer patients — both those in active, curative treatment and those with advanced, late-stage cancers.
Integrative Medicine Service Chief Barrie Cassileth was interviewed about complementary therapies such as acupuncture, massage, and yoga for cancer patients. Massage therapist Jane Greene, acupuncturist Yi Chan, and T'ai Chi instructor Yang Yang were also filmed with patients in both the inpatient and outpatient settings.
New data from a randomized, controlled trial found that acupuncture provided significant reductions in pain, dysfunction, and dry mouth in head and neck cancer patients after neck dissection.
