Use of complementary and alternative medicine providers by fibromyalgia patients under insurance coverage

Mind Body Therapies in the Rehabilitation Program of Fibromyalgia Syndrome

“…Thus, although spontaneously sought and utilised by FMS patients, (Baranowsky et al, 2009;Lind et al, 2007) evidence based data on MBT efficacy are not widely available. The results of the studies are not unequivocal because the clinical trials on MBT suffer from different biases such as: little number of enrolled patients, sometimes also heterogeneous in their clinical characteristics (van Koulil et al, 2007); different outcome measures; the lacking of clinical indicators addressing the patients that may benefit more from a specific treatment; the lacking, sometimes, in movement based MBT of exercises and postures tailored and differentiated for FMS patients (presenting with pain, tenderness, low pain threshold, fatigue); the non definition of an ideal period of treatment, the lacking of congruous follow-up periods.…”

Fibromyalgia syndrome: preventive, social and economic aspects

“…A literature search using keywords "Fibromyalgia" and "Costs and Cost Analysis" identified only 51 publications; of these, only 9 addressed pharmacoeconomic aspects (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)) and 8 addressed disease costs both as direct costs, i.e., charged to public health systems and to patients for diagnosis and medical assistance, and as indirect costs, i.e., financial consequences of reduced productivity by ill patients (28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35). No publications analyzed the cost or consequence of reduced quality of life for patients.…”

“…Second, therapy can be quite expensive given the overall poor response to treatment among many patients (31,32,35). The lack of validated therapeutic protocols may explain the frequent use of physiotherapy or alternative therapy without a corresponding increase in costs for the public health system (26). Social support, whether support groups or personal networks, and education programs are inexpensive and useful avenues for facilitating psychological well being and optimizing available health resources (23).…”

“…The justification for this is that well-defined indicators for evaluating achievement of predetermined goals or validated therapeutic protocols were not available. Further, improvements from a specific therapy were too short-lived to draw meaningful conclusions (23,26,27).…”

Massage Therapy: Intervention Frequency and Cost Survey (IFACS) Data with Policy Implications for Nonpharmacologic Treatment of Chronic Pain

“…To date, most of the relatively limited number of massage therapy implementation studies have focused on service utilization and insurance expenditures [30,31]. Those few that have asked participants about their willingness to pay for massage therapy have shown conflicting results.…”