Patients visiting the complementary medicine clinic for pain: a cross sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundPain is one of the most common reasons for seeking medical care. The purpose of this study was to characterize patients visiting the complementary medicine clinic for a pain complaint.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study. The study took place at Clalit Health Services (CHS) complementary clinic in Beer-Sheva, Israel. Patients visiting the complementary clinic, aged 18 years old and older, Hebrew speakers, with a main complaint of pain were included. Patients were recruited consecutively on random days of the month during a period of six months. Main outcome measures were: pain levels, location of pain, and interference with daily activities. Once informed consent was signed patients were interviewed using a structured questionnaire by a qualified nurse. The questionnaire included socio-demographic data, and the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI).ResultsThree-hundred and ninety-five patients were seen at the complementary medicine clinic during the study period, 201 (50.8%) of them met the inclusion criteria. Of them, 163 (81.1%) agreed to participate in the study and were interviewed. Pain complaints included: 69 patients (46.6%) with back pain, 65 (43.9%) knee pain, and 28 (32.4%) other limbs pain. Eighty-two patients (50.3%) treated their pain with complementary medicine as a supplement for their conventional treatment, and 55 (33.7%) felt disappointed from the conventional medicine experience. Eighty-three patients (50.9%) claimed that complementary medicine can result in better physical strength, or better mental state 51 (31.3%). Thirty-seven patients (22.7%) were hoping that complementary medicine will prevent invasive procedures.ConclusionGiven the high proportion of patients with unsatisfactory pain relief using complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), general practitioners should gain knowledge about CAM and CAM providers should gain training in pain topics to improve communication and counsel patients. More clinical research to evaluate safety and efficiency of CAM for pain is needed to provide evidence based counseling.

An integrative review of complementary and alternative medicine use for back pain: a focus on prevalence, reasons for use, influential factors, self-perceived effectiveness, and communication

“…Large sample-sized studies ranged from 517 to 31,044 participants (mean: 2,696; median: 1,950), and the small sample-sized studies ranged from 92 to 249 participants (mean: 175; median: 194). Only four studies had small sample sizes and were conducted in clinical settings [60,61,66,67]. Of the large sample-sized studies, 8 were conducted in clinical settings [30,43,[62][63][64][65]68,69] and the remaining 18 were population-based studies [26,29,42,44,45,[47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59].…”

“…Although some other studies with large samples reported on the prevalence of CAM use, they either combined back and neck pain together as a single questionnaire item or considered back pain within the broad category of musculoskeletal pain and as such did not allow extraction of prevalence rates specifically for back pain [48,54,55,57,65]. Of the four studies drawing on small samples, three studies identified prevalence rates of CAM use for back pain within a range of 5.6% to 62.7% (mean: 38.3%; median: 46.6%) [60,61,66]. One of the small sample-sized studies, while investigating the use of CAM for chronic pain, reported the prevalence of back pain in the Cross-sectional (n51,310), population sample but did not specify the prevalence rate of CAM use specifically for back pain [67].…”

Complementary and Alternative Medicine in an Integrated Health Care Delivery System: Users of Chiropractic, Acupuncture, and Massage Services

“…[17][18][19][20] Comparing results from these studies with those from the present study requires caution about the generalizability to subsets of the population of members with different types of pain seeking CAM services in an IHDS. In addition, because we used a modified version of the BPI, caution is further warranted in comparing ratings from this study with others using the BPI.…”

“…Nevertheless, some of the findings from these studies show comparable pain and functional impairment ratings as well as areas where the findings diverge. The cross-sectional study by Peleg et al 20 of 163 Israeli patients visiting a complementary medicine clinic because of pain showed similar ratings of current pain and interference with life domains compared with those of KPCO patients. Vallerand et al 21 surveyed 595 residents from urban, suburban, and rural communities and showed pain ratings generally comparable to those reported by KPCO patients.…”

Complementary and alternative medicine for neck pain: Focus on manipulative therapies-chiropractic and osteopathic techniques

“…One cross-sectional study showed that about 23% were hoping to avoid invasive procedures, 34% were disappointed by conventional medicine, and about 50% were using CAM together with conventional treatments (Peleg et al, 2011). A cross-sectional study in Singapore concluded the prevalence of CAM use in those with chronic pain is higher than in a general population.…”