Evidence based complementary and alternative methods used in the prevention and treatment of oral mucositis in cancer:Literature review

Abstract

Cancer patients frequently face symptoms that result from the treatment process and affect their life quality adversely. The most important one of these symptoms is oral mucositis. For the solution of this complication, complementary and alternative methods are used by patients in addition to medical treatment. However, in order for these methods to be successful, it is extremely important that health care team members are informed of these practices, patients are protected against any kind of harm and they are guided to choose the evidence-based methods among the complementary and alternative methods. The present study was carried out to examine the efficiency of complementary and alternative methods in the prevention and treatment of the chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis. The population of the study consists of the articles reached through the research on the data bases “Medline”, “Ebscohost”, “Pubmed”, “Science Direct” and “Google Scholar” using the keywords “cancer patients”, oral mucositis” ,“oral care” and “complementary and alternative methods” in between February and April 2017. Randomized controlled studies that have been published in the last ten years in Turkish and English languages and that had their full texts were included in the examinations. 19 articles complying with the research criteria composed the sample of the compiled study. It was seen that the most commonly used complementary and alternative methods in the prevention and treatment of oral mucositis are cryotherapy (n= 9 articles), honey (n=3), propolis (n=2), chewing gum (n=1), coffee and honey mixture (n=1), kefir (n=1), Liquid C recutita extract (n=1) and cloves-based mouthwash (n=1) in the studies included in the compilation. Complementary and alternative methods are significant recourses for decreasing the incidence and severity of oral mucositis due to their ease of use, tolerability and having no side effects.