It was sought to learn about the meanings within complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use among patients undergoing treatment at the oncology service of the Clinical Hospital of Unicamp. For this, the following were analyzed: 1) how patients dealt with health/ disease; 2) the motivations and processes underlying the decision to use CAM; and 3) the sociability networks that influenced decisions regarding conventional and/ or unconventional cancer treatments. From the discourse of the eight patients interviewed, it was seen that CAM and religious services were important for constructing meanings for the following: the biological dimension of the illness, possibilities for cure, filling the void promoted by the biomedical model and searching for expanded care. Thus, religious practices were experienced by patients such that they constituted a strategy that legitimized and softened the uncertainty regarding questions of a moral, personal, social and physical nature, in relation to chronic oncological conditions.
Cancer; Complementary therapies; Religiousness; Biomedicine