Pain is one of the most feared consequences of cancer. Pain is a major symptom in 75% of hospitalized cancer patients. Poorly relieved pain contributes to the suffering of the patient and family, which may motivate them to seek additional complementary and alternative therapies. Evidence-based complementary therapies are being used for symptom control and to improve quality of life. There is re...

This publication is one in a series of educational resource materials on complementary and alternative health care issues published by the and is thus in the public domain; it may be quoted freely with proper credit. Please cite as follows: Integrating Complementary & Alternative Therapies with Conventional Care is one of a series of publications entitled The Convergence of Complementary, Alter...

Chronic constipation, an ancient disease, is prevalent, and costly in the general population. Complementary and alternative therapies are frequently used for constipation. This review introduces various methods of complementary and alternative therapies, including acupuncture, moxibustion, massage, and herbal medicine. Efficacy, safety, influence factors, sham control design, and mechanisms of ...

HIV-infected/AIDS patients seem to frequently use complementary therapies, yet definitive information in this area is difficult to obtain. The aim of this systematic review is therefore to assess the published data on the use of complementary medicine by HIV-infected/AIDS patients. A computerized systematic literature search was carried out. Data on prevalence of complementary medicine (CM) use...

BACKGROUND Presently, complementary and alternative medicine, including both therapies and herbal/oral supplements, is used globally. Few studies have examined the use of specific therapies, separate from herbal/oral supplements, in cardiac rehabilitation. This paper presents a systematic evaluation of current research evidence related to use of specific complementary and alternative medicine t...

BACKGROUND Effective interdisciplinary communication is important to achieve better quality in health care. The aims of this study were to compare conventional and complementary providers' experience of communication about complementary therapies and conventional medicine with their cancer patients, and to investigate how they experience interdisciplinary communication and cooperation. METHOD...

OBJECTIVE To analyze Estratégia de Saúde da Família (Family Health Strategy) professionals' perception of complementary and integrative therapies. METHODS A study with 177 doctors and nurses was conducted in 2008, based on a self-administered questionnaire. The outcome variables were "interest in complementary and integrative therapies" and "agreement with the National Policy on Complementary...

Complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) and therapies are defined as ‘practices and ideas which are outside the domain of conventional medicine in several countries’, and their usefulness as ‘preventing or treating illness, or promoting health and wellbeing’ [1]. Common therapies include acupuncture, herbal medicine, and manual therapies. Few high quality studies of the effect of compleme...

objective:  unaccustomed and intense eccentric exercise is a common cause of delayed-onset muscle soreness (doms). there are multiple remedies for the treatment of doms, but its clinical and laboratory pieces of evidence are scarce. currently, the treatments proposed for doms are numerous and include pharmaceuticals, herbal remedies, stretching, massage, nutritional supplements, and other alter...

Dr. Wein addresses two issues: the terminology of unproven methods, and patients’ reasons for using them. He prefers to use a previously popular term, “unproven therapies,” to those in common use today, although his term fails to account for the complementary or adjunctive therapies used by the vast majority of cancer patients who try complementary and alternative medicine. The suggestion that ...