(AFP) – Before starting radiotherapy for her breast cancer, Sonia Noël immediately thought of requesting a fire suppressant to ease the side effects. This practice, whose effectiveness remains to be proven, is popular with many patients, and no longer necessarily shocks doctors.
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In Vendée, where she lives, Sonia Noël, 51, assures that “everyone knows a fire cutter”, these people claiming to have the gift of controlling burns. The one she requested practices his “art” for free. After an initial telephone contact, she warned him before each radiotherapy session, so that he “thinks of her”.
Assessment: she went through “20 sessions without excruciating pain, barely a feeling of discomfort”.
Same feeling for Brigitte Le Lay, who consulted a fire cutter twice, when her breast cancer was diagnosed in 2013, and when it recurred this year. “After my first radiotherapy, my left breast was +burned+, and since I called the fireman, nothing more,” assures this sixty-year-old from the Nantes region, who nevertheless calls herself “Cartesian”.
In 10 years, she has noticed a change in the attitude of caregivers towards this ancestral practice: “in 2013, they were not very open on the issue, today, much more, even if they emphasize that the “The Fire Cutter Is Not Going to Cure Cancer.”
In the case of Sonia Noël, it was even the oncologist who first spoke to her about it, before starting the protocol, telling her that “some patients found a real plus with this practice”. Within Rose up, an association which informs, supports and defends the rights of women affected by all types of cancer, Sonia Noël has met many women in her situation.
Today, certain hospitals such as Timone in Marseille or the Bergonié Institute in Bordeaux even have lists of fire suppressants to offer to patients who request them.
– Avoid “charlatans” –
Eric Dudoit, oncology psychologist at Timone, says he took this initiative in 2005 in order to best support a pressing request from patients, to “present them with a list of reliable people, who do not take money for their sessions, and to prevent them from coming across charlatans.”
“Medicine is not all-powerful, and must listen to patients who only ask to be relieved of their anguish and pain,” he pleads.
A study carried out at the Lucien Neuwirth Cancer Institute (Loire) showed that 58% of patients treated for breast cancer used a fire suppressant.
It concluded that the rate of side effects induced by radiotherapy was the same in patients who used a fire breaker as in those who did not.
Co-author of this study and radiotherapist at the Bergonié Institute, Professor Nicolas Magné draws an ambivalent conclusion: “the patients were happy to have used a fire cutter, but there was no difference in terms of “side effects, except that those who had used the cutter were more tired, without us understanding why.”
He believes that “as long as the firefighter does not hinder academic medicine” and provides his care free of charge, his recourse can help certain people suffering from cancer.
Brigitte Le Lay recognizes this: “I don’t know what makes me feel good, if it’s his care or his presence, but these sessions calm my anxieties.”
Professor Norbert Ifrah, president of the National Cancer Institute (Inca), points out that these methods “are not prohibited as long as the patient derives a beneficial effect (moral well-being, improvement in his quality of life) » and that they do not contravene his treatment.
But they “have no scientific evidence to prove their effectiveness,” he recalls.
Without making a “value judgement”, Miviludes (Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses) considers that “any risk of deviation cannot be ruled out”. A risk characterized by “mental destabilization, disproportionate service costs, family breakdowns and attacks on the physical integrity of people”.
Relax
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