Almost all breast cancer patients follow their multidisciplinary cancer team’s treatment recommendations, but a small minority do not for a variety of reasons, including use of alternative medicines, Australian research shows.

The study also provides “preliminary” evidence that non-compliant patients have worse outcomes.

Overall, 92% patients were compliant with recommended management between 2011 and 2016, with 8% of patients not complying with at least one recommendation, found the team from the Breast Cancer Research Centre-WA in Perth.

While the retrospective nature of the study meant that patients’ reasons for non-compliance were not always clear, the three top reasons appeared to be the following: