Giveon Shmuel M, Liberman Nicky, Klang Shmuel, Kahan Ernesto
General Health Services, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Patient Educ Couns. 2004 Apr;53(1):5-11. doi: 10.1016/S0738-3991(03)00241-6.
We studied the extent of patients' utilization of complementary medicine (CM), and their knowledge and attitude regarding it in 740 patients visiting 25 randomly family medicine practices. One-third reported using some kind of CM, usually a natural drug (67.6%), often together with conventional drugs. Among the users of natural drugs, 56.2% believed they caused no side effects, 44.7% never reported natural drug usage to their physician, and 11% did so only rarely. There was a significant correlation (P = 0.03) between the belief that natural drugs can cause adverse effects and the tendency to report their usage to the family physician. Compared to nonusers, the typical user of any kind of CM was older (with a 1.05-fold increase for every year of age), defined his/her health status as bad (8.6-fold higher incidence), visited the family doctor more often, and was of Eastern European origin. In conclusion, although the use of natural drugs is extensive, patients' knowledge of their potential adverse effects is poor. A public educational campaign, with inclusion of the need to report such usage to the family physician, should be implemented, and questions on the use of complementary medicine/natural drugs should be incorporated as an integral part of the history taking by primary care physicians.
我们对740名就诊于25家随机选取的家庭医疗诊所的患者使用补充医学（CM）的程度及其相关知识和态度进行了研究。三分之一的患者报告使用过某种补充医学，通常是天然药物（67.6%），且常常与传统药物一起使用。在天然药物使用者中，56.2%认为其无副作用，44.7%从未向医生报告过使用天然药物的情况，11%只是很少报告。认为天然药物会产生不良反应与向家庭医生报告用药情况的倾向之间存在显著相关性（P = 0.03）。与未使用者相比，任何一种补充医学的典型使用者年龄更大（年龄每增加一岁，使用几率增加1.05倍），将自己的健康状况定义为较差（发病率高8.6倍），更频繁地拜访家庭医生，且为东欧裔。总之，尽管天然药物的使用广泛，但患者对其潜在不良反应的了解甚少。应开展公众教育活动，包括告知患者有必要向家庭医生报告此类用药情况，并且初级保健医生应将关于补充医学/天然药物使用的问题纳入病史采集的必要部分。
