Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Cancer
Date Submitted: Oct 18, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 25, 2018 - Dec 20, 2018
Date Accepted: Aug 31, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Non-Pharmacological Interventions in Patients with Breast Cancer: An Exploratory Study of Social Network Forums Data.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Patients and healthcare professionals are becoming increasingly interested in non-pharmacological interventions (NPI), which can also be called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). In just a few years, this supportive care has gone from solutions aimed at improving the quality of life to solutions intended to reduce symptoms, supplement oncological treatments and prevent recurrences. Social networks are a major vector for disseminating these practices that are not always disclosed to doctors by patients. An exploration of the content of exchanges on social networks by patients suffering from breast cancer can help to better identify the extent and diversity of these practices.
Objective:
This study explores the interest of breast cancer patients in NPI-CAM from posts published in health forums and French-language [social media] groups.
Methods:
The retrospective study is based on a French database of 2 forums and 4 Facebook groups between June 3, 2006 and November 17, 2015. The extracted, anonymized and compiled data (264,249 posts) were analyzed according to the occurrences associated with the NPI categories and their synonyms, and the occurrences associated with the NPI subcategories, their synonyms and their associated terms.
Results:
The results show that breast cancer patients use mainly physical (37.6%) and nutritional (31.3%) interventions. Digital interventions are not mentioned by patients. Herbal medicine is a subcategory cited frequently.
Conclusions:
This exploratory study of the main French forums and discussion group indicates a significant interest of NPIs during and after treatments for breast cancer, with primarily physical and nutritional interventions complementing approved treatments. This work highlights the importance of accurate information (vs. false medicine), prescription and monitoring of these interventions and of the mediating role that health professionals must play in this regard.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.