Reflexology Program May Have Use in Integrative Breast Cancer Care

CancerNetwork® spoke with Heather Zinkin, MD, chief of radiation medicine at the Northwell Health Cancer Institute, about how the findings from a study evaluating reflexology’s impact on anxiety, pain, and energy in patients with breast cancer undergoing radiotherapy might be applied to clinical practice. She presented these findings at the 2024 American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting.

Zinkin expressed that success related to reflexology relied upon the staff believing in the function of the therapy, which she claims is exhibited by the staff at Northwell Health Cancer Institute. Furthermore, she explained that she is in support of other sites offering and expanding upon reflexology use, as well as offering similar complimentary integrative therapies to patients undergoing treatment for cancer. Zinkin concluded by stating that anecdotal accounts from patients revealed an improvement in pain related to chemotherapy-induced neuropathy following the use of reflexology services.

The quality improvement study assessed 560 patient encounters from April 2022 through December 2023 to evaluate the impact of reflexology on patient-reported levels of stress, pain, and energy. Findings from the study showed that stress and pain were reduced by 40.0% and 24.0%, respectively, and that energy increased by 33.0%.

Additionally, improvement in patient well-being overall was reported to have increased by 33.3% (P < .0001). Moreover, funding for the service was renewed following favorable patient outcomes.

Transcript:

One thing we found [about] why our program has been so successful, and why we have continued to offer this service now for 2 and a half years, is because the whole staff really needs to believe in the therapy and buy into it. It needs to be promoted by the whole staff. We, fortunately, have a setting where that is the case. We would love for other sites to be offering this to patients and expanding not only reflexology but other integrative, complementary services, including Reiki therapy and acupuncture. One interesting finding was, anecdotally, we have many women who had chemotherapy-induced neuropathy who reported that reflexology was the only treatment that significantly improved their pain. That was encouraging.

Reference

Zinkin HD, Kostroff K, Dimisa D, et al. Reflexology as an integrative approach to improve stress, energy, and pain in women receiving radiotherapy for breast cancer. Int J Radiat Oncol. 2024;120(suppl 2):e423. doi:10.1016/j.ijrobp.2024.07.944