患癌症的患者越来越倾向于使用论坛和社交媒体平台来获取健康信息并分享他们的经验，特别是在使用传统、补充和综合医学（TCIM）方面。尽管TCIM在癌症患者中很受欢迎，但很少有相关研究利用这些基于网络的来源数据探索癌症患者对TCIM的使用。本研究利用多个论坛和社交媒体平台，探讨了患者在癌症治疗中使用、感兴趣和认知TCIM的情况。收集了从Facebook、Twitter、Reddit和16个健康论坛的开始时间到2022年2月的与TCIM相关的帖子（英文）。进行了人工评估和自然语言处理，进行了描述性分析，以探究针对每种症状和癌症类型最常讨论的TCIM模式。进行了情感分析，以衡量每篇帖子或评论的极性，并从具有积极和消极情感的帖子中识别主题。预先确定了指南中推荐的TCIM模式。采用潜在狄利克雷分配的探索性主题建模分析来研究患者对这些模式的看法。在可用的1620755篇帖子中，涉及到癌症相关症状，如疼痛（10/10，100%的癌症类型）、焦虑和抑郁（9/10，90%）以及失眠（9/10，90%）等，是常见的讨论。大麻是疼痛治疗的最常讨论的TCIM模式之一，在10种癌症类型中的7种（70%）中讨论，以及恶心呕吐、食欲减退、焦虑抑郁和失眠。还发现了7个积极主题和7个消极主题。积极主题包括TCIM使症状可控，减少药物和其副作用的需要等。认为TCIM和传统治疗之间没有互相排斥的关系，对传统治疗的不耐受可能会促进TCIM的使用。相反，TCIM被认为会导致患者拒绝传统治疗或延误诊断和治疗。医生对TCIM的无知和缺乏相关信息可能是其使用的障碍。探索性分析表明，患者很好地讨论了TCIM的推荐，但这些模式也被用于许多其他适应症。其他值得注意的主题包括对大麻合法化的担忧、指压技术和冥想的积极经验。利用机器学习技术，社交媒体和健康论坛提供了重要的患者生成数据资源，可用于了解TCIM的使用模式和患者对其的认知。这些信息将有助于澄清患者的需求和关切，并为将TCIM整合至癌症治疗方向的研究提供指导。我们的结果也表明，应实现对TCIM的有效沟通，并且医生应更加开放地与患者积极探讨TCIM的使用。

Patients with cancer are increasingly using forums and social media platforms to access health information and share their experiences, particularly in the use of traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (TCIM). Despite the popularity of TCIM among patients with cancer, few related studies have used data from these web-based sources to explore the use of TCIM among patients with cancer.This study leveraged multiple forums and social media platforms to explore patients' use, interest, and perception of TCIM for cancer care.Posts (in English) related to TCIM were collected from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and 16 health forums from inception until February 2022. Both manual assessments and natural language processing were performed. Descriptive analyses were performed to explore the most commonly discussed TCIM modalities for each symptom and cancer type. Sentiment analyses were performed to measure the polarity of each post or comment, and themes were identified from posts with positive and negative sentiments. TCIM modalities that are emerging or recommended in the guidelines were identified a priori. Exploratory topic-modeling analyses with latent Dirichlet allocation were conducted to investigate the patients' perceptions of these modalities.Among the 1,620,755 posts available, cancer-related symptoms, such as pain (10/10, 100% cancer types), anxiety and depression (9/10, 90%), and poor sleep (9/10, 90%), were commonly discussed. Cannabis was among the most frequently discussed TCIM modalities for pain in 7 (70%) out of 10 cancer types, as well as nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, anxiety and depression, and poor sleep. A total of 7 positive and 7 negative themes were also identified. The positive themes included TCIM, making symptoms manageable, and reducing the need for medication and their side effects. The belief that TCIM and conventional treatments were not mutually exclusive and intolerance to conventional treatment may facilitate TCIM use. Conversely, TCIM was viewed as leading to patients' refusal of conventional treatment or delays in diagnosis and treatment. Doctors' ignorance regarding TCIM and the lack of information provided about TCIM may be barriers to its use. Exploratory analyses showed that TCIM recommendations were well discussed among patients; however, these modalities were also used for many other indications. Other notable topics included concerns about the legalization of cannabis, acupressure techniques, and positive experiences of meditation.Using machine learning techniques, social media and health forums provide a valuable resource for patient-generated data regarding the pattern of use and patients' perceptions of TCIM. Such information will help clarify patients' needs and concerns and provide directions for research on integrating TCIM into cancer care. Our results also suggest that effective communication about TCIM should be achieved and that doctors should be more open-minded to actively discuss TCIM use with their patients.©Chun Sing Lam, Keary Zhou, Herbert Ho-Fung Loong, Vincent Chi-Ho Chung, Chun-Kit Ngan, Yin Ting Cheung. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 21.04.2023.