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Other Guidelines
The role of complementary and alternative medicine in the
management of early breast cancer: Recommendations of the European Society of
Mastology (EUSOMA)
Duty of care
Finally, all doctors have a duty of care to protect their patients from claims
that encourage patients to abandon established beneficial therapies. This duty
of care extends to recognising adverse interactions between different medicines
that might be taken concurrently. To facilitate this, all clinical
history-taking should include a module on the current or past use of CAM, and
this should lead to the inclusion/exclusion criteria or stratification of
clinical trials of conventional medicine. Patient's belief systems have to be
respected, yet at the same time it is the doctor's duty to alert patients if
their belief systems might be a hazard to their length or quality of survival.
Recommendation 6
Clinical case histories and RCTs should contain a module that
identifies patient's belief systems and concurrent use of CAM and there should
be open and factual discussions between patients and healthcare professionals
about CAM.
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