Treatments used in complementary and alternative medicine

With an increasing use of complementary and alternative medicine by the general public worldwide, the safety issues of possible interactions between complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and other medicines have attracted much more attention in recent years, especially in high-risk populations like cancer and preoperative patients. For example, a questionnaire survey of 100 consecutive gynaecological outpatients in a cancer center in Germany reported that 64% of patients used CAM and 48% used at least one substance-based CAM. A third of all patients were in danger of interactions of CAM with cancer therapy, and more than half of all CAM users and three quarters of users of substance-based CAM are at risk of interactions [1c]. An analysis on the prescription data from 475 patients in U.S. has found that 40% of 302 cancer patients and 43% of 908 non-cancer respondents had at least one potential drug interaction, and 12% were at risk for fatal or permanently debilitating effects [2C]. A survey conducted in Italy on 478 preoperative patients has found that 49.8% of these patients used at least one herbal remedy. Among them 23.1% were actually exposed to at least one potential interaction [3C].