Efficacy of Anthroposophic Medicine
Anthroposophic Medicine has always developed, practised and evaluated multimodal therapies based on its self-assigned remit of treating patients holistically – body, life organization, soul and spirit. This also applies to the syndrome of Cancer-Related Fatigue.
Cancer-Related Fatigue (CRF) is a distressing, persistent sense of physical, emotional, and/or cognitive tiredness or exhaustion related to cancer or cancer treatment that is not proportional to recent activity or treatment and cannot be balanced by sleep and additional periods of rest. CRF is caused by multiple factors and symptoms can become chronic if they remain untreated.
A recently published study of non-metastasized breast cancer patients with CRF compared the long-term effects of anthroposophic treatment, including sleep education, psychoeducation, eurythmy therapy and painting therapy (multimodal therapy), with aerobic training – the usually recommended standard treatment – as well as the effects of a combination of multimodal therapy and aerobic training.
The patients had follow-up examinations over four years. The three-arm, partially randomized (i.e. partially assigned to a study arm by randomization) and controlled study meets the conditions of evidence-based medicine at a higher level and was conducted with scientific rigour.
English by Margot M. Saar
Study Matthias Kröz, Falk Quittel, Marcus Reif, Roland Zerm, Danilo Pranga, Christian Bartsch, Benno Brinkhaus, Arndt Büssing, Christoph Gutenbrunner on behalf of the CRF study group: Four-year follow-up on fatigue and sleep quality of a three-armed partly randomized controlled study in breast cancer survivors with cancer-related fatigue; Scientific Reports 2023;13(1):2705
Symbolic picture Specialist Dr Marion Debus (left), Head of Oncology at Klinik Arlesheim, Switzerland, and team (Photo: Medical Section at the Goetheanum)