Who's most likely to visit complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) providers. With data from hundreds of visits to acupuncturists, chiropractors, massage therapists, and naturopathic physicians (providers of healthcare emphasizing natural therapeutics), researchers found that two thirds were women, and 80 percent of the patients were young and middle-aged adults.
Typically, visits to CAM providers were for back or neck symptoms (primarily to chiropractors and massage therapists), anxiety or depression, fatigue, and headache. Acupuncturists and naturopathic physicians saw patients with a broad range of conditions. Only 4 to 12 percent of visits were the result of referrals from conventional doctors, and most of those referrals were to acupuncturists.
About half of the visits to acupuncturists and a third to half of visits to naturopathic physicians were for problems that these practitioners believed were also being cared for by conventional physicians. Yet the CAM and conventional physicians only discussed patient care 5 to 15 percent of the time, raising concerns among the authors of the study about safety and coordination of care (for example, if the CAM providers prescribed herbs, would they interact with prescription medications prescribed by MDs).
Visits to chiropractors and naturopaths were more likely to be covered by insurance than visits to acupuncturists and massage therapists. |
