title: Network Oncology (NO)--a clinical cancer register for health services research and the evaluation of integrative therapeutic interventions in anthroposophic medicine.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Concepts of integrative oncology (IO), as have been offered by anthroposophic medicine (AM) for decades, are gaining increasing interest and acceptance. Central aspects are multimodal therapeutic interventions, health-related quality of live, and patients' preference as well as therapeutic relationship and clinical outcome. Despite its broad application, IO lacks evaluation in clinical practice and complementary therapies are not monitored by any cancer registries.
  
  
  METHODS
  To close this gap we established 'Network Oncology' (NO), a conjoint registry of German outpatient AM practitioners and AM hospitals. In this paper we present the project and a first data overview and compare it to epidemiological registers and current literature.
  
  
  RESULTS
  NO has collected 10,405 cancer patients' records in 6 years. Compared to epidemiological registers our data show minor differences in disease entity distribution, age, and gender. There is an overproportional amount of young breast cancer patients in NO institutions indicating a demand for integrative therapies in this group. There is no difference between the UICC (Union for International Cancer Control) stages at first diagnosis and at admission to a NO facility. According to our data conventional therapies were less frequently administered after admission to a NO facility. Nevertheless, one third of the patients received their first conventional therapy in a NO facility. 80% of the patients received mistletoe preparations and 63% had nonpharmacotherapeutic, complementary interventions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Integrative oncological approaches attract a great number of patients visiting AM institutions. The NO provides an infrastructure to evaluate integrative interventions in AM, allows comparison to other clinical registers, and thus can contribute to health service research in this field.
authors.affiliation: Forschungsinstitut Havelhoehe gGmbH, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Friedemann
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schad
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Axtner
authors.forename: Antje
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Happe
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Breitkreuz
authors.forename: Constantin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Paxino
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gutsch
authors.forename: Burkhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Matthes
authors.forename: Marion
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Debus
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kröz
authors.forename: Günther
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Spahn
authors.forename: Hartmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Riess
authors.forename: Hans-Broder
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: von Laue
authors.forename: Harald
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Matthes
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000887:Anthroposophy; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D055048:Integrative Medicine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D008495:Medical Oncology; D008875:Middle Aged; D014784:Mistletoe / Q000737:chemistry; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000628:therapy; D010936:Plant Extracts / Q000627:therapeutic use; D012042:Registries; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010936:Plant Extracts