Characteristics of Patients Presenting at a University Outpatient Department for Complementary and Integrative Medicine

Abstract

Background: Complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) is increasingly provided at uni-versity outpatient departments (OPDs) in Germany, but its scientific evaluation is sparse. Therefore, we aimed to investigate and evaluate feasibility, patients' characteristics and com-plaints at a university's CIM-OPD.Methods: A prospective evaluation included new patients without age restriction. At baseline, and after six and 12 months, patients filled out paper questionnaires. Patients rated their mean subjectively perceived severity of the main complaint within the last seven days on a numeri-cal rating scale (NRS) from 0=no complaints to 10=maximum complaints, their perceived re-silience capacity in everyday life within the last seven days (0=not resilient to 10=very resili-ent), and their contentment with the treatment (0=not content to 10=very content). Diagnoses were provided by physicians and coded according to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision. All data were analyzed descriptively.Results: During two years, 536 new patients (72.6% response, age (mean +/- SD and range) 49.6 +/- 15.8 and 1 - 86 years, 75.7% female) chose to participate. The most frequent diagno-sis groups were neoplasms (C00-C97, n=143, 18.6%) and musculoskeletal diseases (M00-M99, n=137, 17.9%). In n=165 patients (30.8%) more than one diagnosis was provided. In a subgroup of 187 patients, who returned the questionnaire after 6 months, we compared base-line to 6-month values: severity of main complaint (mean +/- SD) 5.2 +/- 2.6 changed to 3.9 +/- 2.6; resilience capacity 5.1 +/- 2.6 to 5.6 +/- 2.4. After six months, respondents rated their content-ment with the treatment with (mean +/- SD) 7.7 +/- 2.6. Data after 12 months (n=113) are compa-rable to data after 6 months.Conclusion: Patients of our CIM-OPD had a broad age range, were predominantly female and suffered mostly from oncologic-related complaints and musculoskeletal diseases. In the responding subgroup after six months, patients were content with the treatment. These re-sults should be verified by further prospective evaluations.