Title: Present status of clinic for complementary and alternative medicine at university hospitals in Japan; a case of Tokushima University Hospital
Abstract: The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has been increasing in Japan as well as in other countries. Among various modalities, traditional Japanese herbal medicine (Kampo) is rather well recognized and is integrated into the Japanese health-care system. On the other hand, many Japanese physicians assign a limited role in CAM except Kampo, and only a few public university hospitals, such as Osaka University and Kanazawa University, have a CAM clinic in Japan. At Tokushima University Hospital, an academic hospital in the Shikoku district, we started CAM consultation clinic in July 2007 to give consumers scientific information of CAM by specialists. Here we report the present activity of the clinic. The main issues that we deal are health foods including dietary supplements and Kampo. At present, we do not accept consultations for other types of CAM, such as mind–body interventions or energy therapies. Two nutritionists and four pharmacists (professors and associate professors of the University of Tokushima Graduate School) and two pharmacists belonging to the Tokushima University Hospital play roles in the CAM consultation clinic. From July 2007 to June 2008, we dealt 43 cases. The underlying status for consultation were malignant diseases (23%), cardiovascular diseases (21%), collagen vascular diseases (9%), allergic diseases (5%), other chronic diseases (26%) and no specific underlying diseases (general well-being) (16%). The area for consultation was health foods including dietary supplements (37%), Kampo (30%) and others (33%). For an effective and safe use of CAM, close contact between consumers, consultation team and physicians and that between primary care institutions and University Hospitals are necessary, and we are going to widen our activity to catch up with these issues.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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