Department of Pediatric Oncology and Haematology, University Children's Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany.
J Altern Complement Med. 2010 Apr;16(4):473-9. doi: 10.1089/acm.2009.0601.
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.
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).
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%).
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.
本研究旨在了解在瑞士德语区，成年人在使用补充和替代医学（CAM）疗法治疗儿童时的体验。
对在苏黎世市区的一家三级儿科急诊室陪伴儿童就诊的成年人进行了横断面调查；分发的问卷（1600 份中的 1143 份）中有 71%可用于数据分析。受访者被问及他们在使用 CAM 治疗儿童时的体验，以及（出于比较的原因）在使用常规医学（CM）治疗时的体验。
受访者普遍认为 CAM 疗法的疗效不如 CM，但仍有 49%的受访者表示在某些情况下/针对某些疾病，CAM 疗法比 CM 更有效，13%的受访者表示 CAM 疗法与 CM 一样有效。与 CM 相比，CAM 的使用频率更高，顺应性更低。受访者描述两种类型的药物对患者的直接成本相当。93%（93%）的受访者在使用 CAM 治疗时没有副作用，而只有 52%的受访者表示 CM 治疗时没有副作用；观察到的 CAM 副作用比 CM 副作用弱。顺势疗法是最常用的 CAM 形式（所有 CAM 用户的 77%），其次是草药（64%）、人智学医学（24%）、中医（13%）、阿育吠陀（5%）和其他形式（34%）。
从受访者的角度来看，CAM 疗法和 CM 疗法之间最显著的区别是副作用的频率和强度，后者的副作用明显更高。受访者使用了多种 CAM 疗法。
