Do patients not trust their doctors to be supportive of patient use of alternative care such as chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal remedies and more? Two new studies indicate that patients are indeed reluctant to discuss these options with their doctors.

Alternative Medicine

Study: Docs in Dark About Complementary Therapies

 

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today

Published: March 23, 2013

Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

 

 

Many cardiology patients use complementary medicines and therapies but they may not routinely share that information with their doctors, researchers reported.

In a survey of cardiology patients at one clinic in Scotland, more than half reported they used at least one complementary therapy, according to Jenny Jones, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland.

But records suggested that few patients had told doctors about their use of complementary treatments, Jones and colleagues reported at the EuroHeartCare 2013 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland.

"In light of the potential for adverse interactions we believe that clinicians should routinely ask all their patients whether they use any form" of complementary therapy, Jones said in a statement.

The researchers noted that many popular herbal remedies, such as ginger, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, and St. John's wort can affect platelet aggregation, prolong bleeding time, and increase or decrease clotting time in patients on warfarin.

As well, they noted, hawthorn extracts -- used to treat symptoms of heart disease for centuries, although the evidence is still unclear -- have the potential to interact with digoxin.

To help quantify the issue, they surveyed a convenience sample of 116 cardiology patients in an outpatient clinic, asking if they had used any of a list of complementary therapies.

Sixty patients, or 52%, said they had used at least one, Jones and colleagues found. The five most popular were reflexology, acupuncture, osteopathy, massage, and chiropractic therapies.

Interestingly, 77% of participants thought that complementary therapies and medicines should be provided by the National Health Service, the publicly supported healthcare system in the U.K.

And 88% thought more research should be conducted into their possible benefits.

The report comes 2 months after Canadian researchers found widespread use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) among children treated at two hospitals that were widely separated geographically.

In that study, Sunita Vohra, MD, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and colleagues urged clinicians "to inquire about CAM use during routine history taking at every patient visit."

In the current study, co-author Stephen Leslie, MBChB, PhD, said that a review of patient notes found little evidence that doctors knew of the use of complementary and alternative medicines.

"We found that very few people had volunteered this clinically important information in consultations," he said in a statement, "suggesting that they don't often disclose (complementary and alternative medicine) use to cardiology teams."

Primary source: EuroHeartCare

Source reference:
Leslie SJ, et al "Survey of cardiology outpatients use of and attitudes towards alternative and complementary therapies in the NHS" EuroHeartCare 2013; Abstract 90147.