With increased awareness of complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) and concern of potential adverse effects or limited effectiveness of conventional medications, patients and parents are looking to CAM approaches as either an alternative or as adjunct therapy, especially for chronic diseases such as asthma or cystic fibrosis. It is important that practitioners have adequate information so tha...

Forty percent of all menopausal women seek medical attention to alleviate symptoms of menopause, a natural physiologic process. Severe symptoms and an overall decrease in quality of life have prompted many women to demand additional information and treatment. Although menopausal hormone therapy has been the standard, increasing evidence suggests that women are looking to complementary and alter...

The expansive use of immunosuppressive medications in fields such as transplantational medicine and oncology, the higher frequency of invasive procedures in an ageing population and the HIV/AIDS pandemic have increased the frequency of systemic fungal infections. At the same time, increased resistance of pathogenic fungi to classical antifungal agents has led to sustained research efforts targe...

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use among children with cancer who had received or were receiving treatment at a large hospital in the UK, including the identification of the most commonly used therapies and parental motives for doing so. Using a cross-sectional survey design, questionnaires were sent to parents of paediatric...

This review evaluated the effect of complementary and alternative medicine on pain during labor with conventional scientific methods using electronic data bases through 2006 were used. Only randomized controlled trials with outcome measures for labor pain were kept for the conclusions. Many studies did not meet the scientific inclusion criteria. According to the randomized control trials, we co...

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes among non-Hispanic African American adults aged 20 years and older is 11.4%, compared to 8.4% non-Hispanic whites. Given the high rate of diabetes in this population, it is important to determine whether African Americans use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and if so, what kind. Such information is important to healthcare professionals who prescri...

Usage of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is steadily increasing over the last decades, gaining medical, economic and sociological importance. The aim of the present study was to assess the use of complementary and alternative therapies in cancer patients. A cross-sectional, descriptive survey design was used to collect data through an anonymous questionnaire. A total of 267 patient...

Despite radical improvements in medicine over the past 60 years, patients maintain multiple health care pathways that include high utilization of unconventional treatments. The authors examine three possible relationships between mainstream and alternative medicine: opposition, integration, and pluralism. Opposition, the traditional ethical position that the medical profession must eradicate un...

IN 1992, WITH AN INITIAL BUDGET OF $2 MILLION, Congress created the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM). Based on legislation sponsored by Iowa politicians Tom Harkin and Berkeley Bedell, OAM’s mission was “to explore complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science.” Senator Harkin reportedly believed that bee pollen had cured his hay fever, and Representativ...