An interview with Dr. Jun Mao from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, lead author on "Integrative Medicine for Pain Management in Oncology: SIO-ASCO Guideline." Dr. Mao reviews the recommendations on integrative approaches, such as acupuncture, yoga, reflexology, massage, guided imagery with progressive muscle relaxation, hypnosis, and music therapy for managing pain in patients with cancer, and the evidence behind these recommendations. He also addresses the implications for clinicians and patients as well as outstanding questions about the use of integrative approaches for pain management. Read the full guideline at www.asco.org/survivorship-guidelines.   TRANSCRIPT Brittany Harvey: Hello, and welcome to the ASCO Guidelines podcast series brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content and offering enriching insight into the world of cancer care. You can find all the shows, including this one, at asco.org/podcast. My name is Brittany Harvey, and today I'm interviewing Dr. Jun Mao from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, New York, lead author on ‘Integrative Medicine for Pain Management in Oncology: Society for Integrative Oncology and American Society of Clinical Oncology Guideline’. Thank you for being here, Dr. Mao. Dr. Jun Mao: Thank you, Brittany. It's great to be here. Brittany Harvey: First, I'd like to note that ASCO takes great care in the development of its guidelines and ensuring that the ASCO conflict of interest policy is followed for each guideline. The full conflict of interest information for this guideline panel is available in line with the publication of the guideline in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Dr. Mao, do you have any relevant disclosures that are directly related to this guideline topic? Dr. Jun Mao: No, I don't. Brittany Harvey: Great. Then I'd like to get into the content of this guideline. So what is the purpose and scope of this joint SIO-ASCO guideline? Dr. Jun Mao: So Brittany, about one in two cancer patients or survivors experience pain that often are not adequately controlled by conventional medications. So often individuals seek out complementary and alternative medicine, more recently known as integrative medicine, for the relief of pain, but there's a very little synthesized information for oncologists to help guide the patients in choosing evidence-based integrative therapy approach. Therefore, we decided to really do a systematic review and come up with a system of guidelines that can help oncologists and patients make informed decisions about choosing the right type of integrative medicine approaches to manage pain. The Society for Integrative Oncology and the American Society of Clinical Oncology joined forces that really convene a group of panelists, that represent many fields in conventional oncology in support of integrative medicine. And after reviewing over 200 articles from clinical trials to systematic review have come up with very thoughtful recommendations to help patients and physicians to provide the best evidence-based care on how to manage pain for patients with cancer. Brittany Harvey: Excellent. And yes, it's great to have SIO and ASCO join forces on this guideline. So then next, I'd like to review those key evidence-based recommendations of this guideline that you just mentioned. The recommendations are provided in the guideline by pain type. So I'd like to review each category for our listeners, starting with: what is recommended for patients experiencing aromatase inhibitor related joint pain? Dr. Jun Mao: So we recommend acupuncture should be offered to patients experiencing aromatase inhibitors related joint pain in breast cancer. And this is really evidence-based, benefits outweigh the harms. And with intermediate quality of evidence and moderate strength of recommendation. As many of our audience would know, aromatase inhibitors cause very se