[Omeo33] Art 1113 - JACM, 2010, 16 (4), 473-479

[Gino Santini]

Medicinal Systems of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: A Cross- 
Sectional Survey at a Pediatric Emergency Department
Tycho Jan Zuzak, Isabelle Zuzak-Siegrist, Lukas Rist, Georg Staubli,  
Ana Paula Simões-Wüst

Objective: The purpose of this study was to find out which experiences  
adults are making while treating children with complementary and  
alternative medicine (CAM) therapies in German-speaking Switzerland.
Design and subjects: A cross-sectional survey was performed on adults  
accompanying the children presenting to an urban, tertiary pediatric  
emergency department in Zurich; 71% of the distributed questionnaires  
(1143 of 1600) could be used for data analysis. The respondents were  
asked about their experiences while treating the child with CAM and— 
for comparison reasons—with conventional medicine (CM).
Results: The respondents perceived the effectiveness of CAM therapies  
in general to be inferior to that of CM, although 49% of all  
respondents stated that CAM therapies were more effective than CM in  
certain cases/against certain diseases and 13% that CAM therapies were  
as effective as CM. Higher frequency of use and lower compliance were  
observed in the case of CAM, relatively to CM. Respondents described  
the direct costs for the patient of both types of medicine to be  
comparable. Ninety-three percent (93%) of the respondents experienced  
no side-effects with CAM therapies, whereas only 52% of the  
respondents stated the same about CM therapies; the observed side- 
effects of CAM were weaker than those of CM. Homeopathy was the most  
frequently used form of CAM (77% of all CAM users), followed by herbal  
medicine (64%), anthroposophic medicine (24%), Traditional Chinese  
Medicine (13%), Ayurveda (5%), and others (34%).
Conclusions: From the respondents' point of view, the most marked  
difference between CAM- and CM therapies concerns the frequency and  
intensity of side-effects, which were markedly higher in the latter  
case. The respondents made use of a wide variety of CAM therapies.

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