WHO USES COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE?

The New England Journal of Medicine published results of a landmark study on the use of complementary and alternative medicine appeared in a 1993 issue. The study was led by David Eisenberg, MD, now the director of Harvard University’s Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies.

Researchers polled 1539 adults in the United States, asking them about 16 common complementary therapies. The study results showed one in three adult Americans used a complementary / alternative therapy within the past year. The surprising results are that 34% of American adults used an integrative therapy.

Some other findings:

• A third of the people who had used complementary and alternative medicine saw practitioners, with an average of 19 visits in the preceding year.
• The highest use of complementary and alternative medicine was reported by people between 25 to 49 years of age who had relatively more education and higher incomes.
• The majority used unconventional therapy for chronic, as opposed to life-threatening, medical conditions. Among those who used unconventional therapy for serious medical conditions, the vast majority (83 percent) also sought treatment for the same condition from a medical doctor.
• 72 percent of the respondents who used unconventional therapy did not inform their medical doctor that they had done so.