Cancer patients have long searched for treatment beyond radiation, surgery and chemotherapy. And they’re asking their physicians about other treatments. Many cancer specialists at Miami Beach’s Mount Sinai Medical Center are integrating nutrition, yoga, aromatherapy, meditation, art classes and other therapies with conventional treatments. One leader in the approach is Dr. Mike Cusnir, Mount Sinai’s co-director of gastrointestinal malignancies. Patient questions and requests prompted him to research complementary therapies for his cancer patients, including conducting clinical trials of such therapies.
In 2010, Cusnir enrolled in the University of Arizona’s two-year Fellowship in Integrative Medicine program. Since then, he’s led other Mount Sinai residents through integrative medicine training and continues to find new ways to incorporate it into his practice.
These approaches, he stresses, “should not be considered alternative medicine.” If medical practitioners treat them as alternative, he explains, they will become just that — alternatives to conventional medicine. “What we want to focus on,” Cusnir says, “is for this to become integrated into conventional medicine.”
Read more in our February issue.
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