Integrative Medicine and Pain Management in Patients With Cancer

An interview with Dr. Jun Mao from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, lead author on "Integrative Medicine for Pain Management in Oncology: SIO-ASCO Guideline." Dr. Mao reviews the recommendations on integrative approaches, such as acupuncture, yoga, reflexology, massage, guided imagery with progressive muscle relaxation, hypnosis, and music therapy for managing pain in patients with cancer, and the evidence behind these recommendations. He also addresses the implications for clinicians and patients as well as outstanding questions about the use of integrative approaches for pain management. Read the full guideline at www.asco.org/survivorship-guidelines.

TRANSCRIPT

Brittany Harvey: Hello, and welcome to the ASCO Guidelines podcast series brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content and offering enriching insight into the world of cancer care. You can find all the shows, including this one, at asco.org/podcast.

My name is Brittany Harvey, and today I'm interviewing Dr. Jun Mao from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, New York, lead author on 'Integrative Medicine for Pain Management in Oncology: Society for Integrative Oncology and American Society of Clinical Oncology Guideline'.

Thank you for being here, Dr. Mao.

Dr. Jun Mao: Thank you, Brittany. It's great to be here.

Brittany Harvey: First, I'd like to note that ASCO takes great care in the development of its guidelines and ensuring that the ASCO conflict of interest policy is followed for each guideline. The full conflict of interest information for this guideline panel is available in line with the publication of the guideline in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Dr. Mao, do you have any relevant disclosures that are directly related to this guideline topic?

Dr. Jun Mao: No, I don't.

Brittany Harvey: Great. Then I'd like to get into the content of this guideline. So what is the purpose and scope of this joint SIO-ASCO guideline?

Dr. Jun Mao: So Brittany, about one in two cancer patients or survivors experience pain that often are not adequately controlled by conventional medications. So often individuals seek out complementary and alternative medicine, more recently known as integrative medicine, for the relief of pain, but there's a very little synthesized information for oncologists to help guide the patients in choosing evidence-based integrative therapy approach. Therefore, we decided to really do a systematic review and come up with a system of guidelines that can help oncologists and patients make informed decisions about choosing the right type of integrative medicine approaches to manage pain.

The Society for Integrative Oncology and the American Society of Clinical Oncology joined forces that really convene a group of panelists, that represent many fields in conventional oncology in support of integrative medicine. And after reviewing over 200 articles from clinical trials to systematic review have come up with very thoughtful recommendations to help patients and physicians to provide the best evidence-based care on how to manage pain for patients with cancer.

Brittany Harvey: Excellent. And yes, it's great to have SIO and ASCO join forces on this guideline. So then next, I'd like to review those key evidence-based recommendations of this guideline that you just mentioned. The recommendations are provided in the guideline by pain type. So I'd like to review each category for our listeners, starting with: what is recommended for patients experiencing aromatase inhibitor related joint pain?

Dr. Jun Mao: So we recommend acupuncture should be offered to patients experiencing aromatase inhibitors related joint pain in breast cancer. And this is really evidence-based, benefits outweigh the harms. And with intermediate quality of evidence and moderate strength of recommendation. As many of our audience would know, aromatase inhibitors cause very severe types of joint pain that not only affect quality of life and functions, but make many women stop taking these life saving drugs.

So the panelists want to recommend this therapy based on large randomized control trial that hope this can be part of a pain management strategy along with exercise and duloxetine so give people the options so that women can not only have better quality of life, but also hopefully they can stay on aromatase inhibitor to prevent the recurrence of breast cancer. And we also found some weak evidence for yoga to improve joint pain related to AIs. However, the evidence is weak, although the benefit outweighs the harm. So clearly, more studies are needed to make yoga as a part of therapies for cancer patients.

Brittany Harvey: Understood. And thank you for reviewing the level of evidence behind those two interventions for patients experiencing aromatase inhibitor related joint pain. So following those recommendations, what is recommended for patients experiencing general cancer pain or musculoskeletal pain?

Dr. Jun Mao: So in terms of general cancer pain or musculoskeletal pain, there are three therapies that we consider that may be offered to patients experiencing this type of pain: acupuncture, reflexology or acupressure, or massage. So reflexology and acupressure use the same kind of principles like acupuncture, but instead of using needles, by using hands. So that's kind of in between acupuncture and massage. So these are evidence based recommendations with benefits outweigh harms, and the quality of evidence is intermediate with moderate level of evidence and recommendations. So clearly, for cancer patients or survivors that experience this type of general cancer pain or musculoskeletal pain, I think these approaches may be appropriately integrated along with conventional pharmacotherapy or physical therapy.

Brittany Harvey: Definitely. It's great to have options to go along with conventional pharmacologic therapy. So then following those recommendations you just mentioned, what is recommended for patients with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy?

Dr. Jun Mao: So chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, also known as CIPN, is a very bothersome symptom resulting from certain types of chemotherapy that can be very functional limiting, and resulting in falls and that also can cut the dosage of chemotherapy. So this is a quite bothersome to patients and also can be really challenging in the practice of oncology. So based on the current evidence, we recommend either acupuncture or reflexology or acupressure may be offered to patients who experience CIPM. So, unfortunately, the evidence base here is weaker. So although it's evidence-based, benefits outweigh harms, but the quality of evidence is low. Therefore, the level recommendation is weak. So basically, there are a number of smaller trials that really provide some good signals that this type of therapies can be beneficial. But we really need more large and definitive trials to establish the strength of the evidence

Brittany Harvey: Understood. It's important to know in which patient populations we have more evidence and where we still need confirmatory results. So following those recommendations, what is recommended for patients who experience procedural or surgical pain?

Dr. Jun Mao: Many surgery procedures or surgery itself can cause acute short-term pain that if not adequately treated, can then become chronic. So in this setting, there is actually a pretty reasonably robust base for hypnosis. So the evidence base really is intermediate with moderate level recommendation. We consider that hypnosis may be offered to patients experiencing procedural pain in cancer treatment or diagnostic workups. However, for other type of therapies like acupuncture or acupressure or music therapy, although there are some smaller trials to show that it could be beneficial, the current evidence base is very low and the strength of recommendation is weak. So clearly, we need more high-quality trials to establish the evidence base for those therapies for surgery or procedure-related pain

Brittany Harvey: Understood, and we'll get into some of those outstanding questions or where there's insufficient evidence a little bit later in the episode. So then the last category of recommendations that the panel made: what is recommended for patients who have pain during palliative and hospice care?

Dr. Jun Mao: So for patients with advanced cancer near the end of life, there is some good evidence that massage may be offered for patients experiencing pain during palliative and hospice care. So we recommend massage should be used with an intermediate level of evidence and moderate level of recommendation. And I do think the caveat is we still don't know the long-term effects for massage. Therefore, many of the trials, the follow up are reasonably short. But the evidence showing that acupuncture in the population of palliative care hospice patients can produce immediate pain relief as well as to enhance coping. Therefore, we suggest massage may be offered to patients experiencing pain during hospice or palliative care settings.

Brittany Harvey: Understood. Well, thank you for reviewing all those recommendations, the level of evidence behind them and the strength of those recommendations. But you've also mentioned that in several areas, there's low evidence or insufficient evidence. So are there interventions that the panel reviewed but found insufficient or inconclusive evidence to make recommendations?

Dr. Jun Mao: Brittany, I feel like the field of integrative medicines research is still in its infancy or adolescence. So there's clearly a lot of gaps, particularly in the area of mindfulness-based interventions. There are studies showing outside oncology settings, it can be very helpful for managing pain and pain coping, but that literature in oncology is very, very limited to make any reasonable recommendation. So I think research is needed.

Another area is in the area of herbal medicine or supplements. A lot of cancer patients have a lot of interest in using supplements or herbs to manage symptoms, improve their sense of well-being. But the trials unfortunately in this setting are just too sparse and the quality is too poor to make any recommendation. Last but not least, is for children that experience pain. This guideline was sought out to develop recommendations for both adults and children. Unfortunately, the trials in the pediatric populations are just too few and some of the quality are just too poor. Therefore, there's inconclusive evidence in that population to recommend any specific therapy to be used to manage pain.

So I do think these represent really important gaps in research that we really need to be developing and designing and conducting rigorous clinical trials to build an evidence base so we can bring integrative medicine into conventional oncology care to help patients with a variety of truths.

Brittany Harvey: Yes, well, we certainly appreciate the panel reviewing this mountain of evidence across several different integrative oncology approaches, even if we ended up not making recommendations for certain interventions because of inconclusive or insufficient evidence because it still demonstrates the need for high-quality trials in those areas. In your view, Dr. Mao, what is the importance of this guideline? And how will it change clinical practice?

Dr. Jun Mao: Brittany, I think this guideline is both important and timely. With the opiate epidemic experienced in the United States, managing pain for cancer patients and survivors is incredibly challenging. This is the first SIO and ASCO joint guideline for integrative medicine for pain. And for the first time, we have solid recommendations for specific integrative medicine modalities to care for patients and survivors with pain. I do think the implementation process will take time. First of all, we need to find ways to educate oncology providers as well as patients about the evidence base of this treatment so they can talk to their patients about this type of therapies.

Second of all, some of the therapies are not uniformly covered by insurance. So we do need better insurance coverage for integrative therapies such as acupuncture, massage, or reflexology for managed pain for cancer patients. So people from across socioeconomic areas can access it.

I think last but not least, as we know, there are disparities in healthcare infrastructures. In large hospitals like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dana-Farber, or MD Anderson Cancer Center, we do have acupuncture services developed to help cancer patients. But then in smaller community hospitals, especially in those who serve predominantly black and brown populations, those services may not be in existence. So we need to partner with our community partners to develop the necessary resources to overcome those structural barriers for these therapies to be incorporated as part of standard oncology care.

Brittany Harvey: Definitely. Those are key points on the implementation of this guideline and the availability and accessibility of integrative medicine modalities across different hospitals and patients. So then, this leads into my next question, how will these guideline recommendations impact patients?

Dr. Jun Mao: It is my hope this will really help improve patient care, and also patients here in such conventional oncological treatments, whether they're chemo therapies or hormonal treatments. I do think patients in general have a lot of preferences for using therapies that are a little bit more natural or therapies are in addition to drugs to manage their pain or symptoms. So these guidelines clearly provided recommendations based on prior research. And I do think as we engage patients in shared decision making, we need to really acknowledge patients' beliefs, preferences, as well as availability of treatments in their care settings. So hopefully we can provide both evidence-based and patient-centered care to manage pain.

Brittany Harvey: It's great to have more options beyond conventional treatments to offer patients to help with pain management because it occurs across cancer patients. Finally, Dr. Mao, you've already talked about some interventions where we lacked data such as mindfulness-based interventions, herbal medicines and supplements, and interventions in the pediatric population. But what are the outstanding questions for the use of integrative approaches and managing pain in patients with cancer?

Dr. Jun Mao: Brittany, as a researcher, I'm always thinking about the future questions. I do think with clinical trials in the last 10 years, there's definitely larger and well done trials to demonstrate both efficacy and effectiveness of specific integrative medicine therapies for improving pain. We need to do more of that in the next 10, 20 years. In addition, I think two particular areas of research I hope to see more research as part of these guidelines being implemented, one is what I consider precision pain management. But just because acupuncture works for some patients, it doesn't work for everyone. We need to figure out what type of molecular biomarkers, so psychological attributes can help to predict who may respond to acupuncture or not so we can make sure the right person gets the right care for best pain management and at the least amount of cost to him or herself or to the society.

The second issue I really think we've got to do better is I feel like there's wide acknowledgement of health disparity in pain management, particularly in cancer patients. I'd love to see more research designed for and in populations of historically underserved populations, so we can really implement this approaches to narrow the health disparity issues in cancer care.

Brittany Harvey: Absolutely. Those are key points about providing equitable care for pain management in oncology. So I want to thank you for all of your work on these guidelines, Dr. Mao, and thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

Dr. Jun Mao: Brittany, it's such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Brittany Harvey: And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in to the ASCO Guidelines podcast series. To read the full guideline, go to www.asco.org/survivorship-guidelines. You can also find many of our guidelines and interactive resources in the free ASCO Guidelines app available on iTunes or the Google Play Store. If you have enjoyed what you've heard today, please rate and review the podcast and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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