Original Abstract 📡 Source Text
BACKGROUND: Breast cancer affects 2.3 million women annually worldwide, with survivors experiencing substantial unmet supportive care needs around symptom management, lifestyle support, psychological wellbeing, sexual health and survivorship. Integrative oncology (IO) is a patient-centered, evidence-informed approach combining lifestyle and mind-body interventions, natural products and complementary therapies alongside standard cancer treatment, supported by Society for Integrative Oncology and American Society of Clinical Oncology (SIO-ASCO) guidelines, but UK service delivery and patient experience data are limited.
METHODS: We conducted a multi-component study combining (i) a four-year electronic healthcare record (EHR) analysis of breast cancer (BC) patients attending Synthesis Clinic, a UK physician-led multidisciplinary integrative oncology service, between January 2022 and March 2026; and (ii) a cross-sectional patient survey of 232 women diagnosed with breast cancer, in collaboration with the National Centre for Integrative Oncology (NCIO) and the UK Building Resilience in Breast Cancer (BRiC) Centre, capturing experience of standard oncological care alone (n=211) and of combined standard plus integrative oncology care (n=21).
RESULTS: EHR analysis identified 182 women (mean age 50.3 years; 45.6% ever-metastatic; 20.3% triple-negative). Modality engagement was anchored on nutrition (95.0%) and integrative oncology physician consultations (55.9%), with smaller subgroups accessing intravenous nutrient therapy (20.9%), mistletoe therapy (13.7%), emotional wellbeing support (13.2%) and other modalities. In the standard care survey, unmet need exceeded 60% across seven supportive care domains, peaking at 85% for sleep and 83% for sexual health. Within-patient comparison in the IO cohort showed unmet need reduced to 0% in 11 of 13 directly comparable domains, with reductions exceeding 50 percentage points in 8 domains. 76% of IO cohort respondents rated integrative care as extremely important and 88% rated quality as very high or high.
CONCLUSIONS: A structured, multidisciplinary, physician-led integrative oncology service is feasible in the UK and may help address guideline-aligned supportive care domains that are systematically under-delivered within standard oncological care. Substantial sociodemographic inequities in access remain and are the explicit focus of the NCIO charity service development. Our findings may also support the case for developing multidisciplinary integrative oncology hubs as specialist community centers within the NHS.
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