1Department of Hepato-gastroenterology, Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, Karachi, Pakistan.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION:
The
use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has increased over
the last few years, and an emergent data suggests that some CAM
modalities may be helpful in addressing gastrointestinal (GI)
conditions. Our aim was to find out the prevalence of such practices for
GI condition amongst patients visiting an OPD of a large tertiary care
centre of Karachi, Pakistan.
METHODS:
Patients
visiting outpatient department of Hepatogastroenterology department at
SIUT, Pakistan from March 2014 to March 2015, were included in this
cross sectional study. A pre designed questionnaire was used that
included the demographic data, primary disease of the patient, CAM
modality used, reason for the use of CAM therapy and reasons for
stopping it. Frequencies of different variables were computed using SPSS
version 18.
RESULTS:
906
patients were interviewed, out of which 52% (471) were males. The mean
age at presentation was 39.81±12.4 years. 234 (25.8%) of the
participants used one of the CAM modalities; Herbal medicine being most
common one, seen in 122 (52.13%) followed by spiritual 61 (26%), and homeopathy
33 (14%). The duration of therapy was limited to six months in
161(68%), whereas 7 patients (2.9%) had prolonged duration of use of
more than five years. Reasons for using CAM therapy included advice by
family and friends in 66 patients (28%), personal will in 42 (17.94%),
no benefit from allopathic treatment in 34 (14.5%), while high cost was
the reason of use in 3(5%) of the patients. The most common reason for
discontinuation of CAM was no benefit, seen in 113 patients (48.30%),
followed by physician's advice in 32 (17%) patients, and side effects in
19 (8%). On the other hand 44 patients (18.80%) reported benefit from
the therapy while 14 (5.9%) were still continuing with CAM modality.
Among the CAM users 140 (60.09%) were un-educated or had primary
education while CAM nonusers had 328 (47%) were either uneducated or had
primary education only correlation reveals P value 0.004.
CONCLUSION:
Significant
numbers of patients used CAM therapy. A lower level of education was
associated with increased usage of CAM while cost had no major impact on
its usage.
KEYWORDS:
Complimentary and alternate medicine; OPD; Pakistan; gastrointestinal symptoms; herbal medication
