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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Alternative medicine consultations and remedies in patients with the irritable bowel syndrome.

H L Smart, +2 more
- 01 Jul 1986 - 
- Vol. 27, Iss: 7, pp 826-828
TLDR
The use of alternative medicine is common in patients with irritable bowel syndrome and this does not appear to be explicable in terms of the nature, chronicity or refractoriness to treatment of symptoms.
Abstract
The use of alternative medicine was assessed by questionnaire in 96 patients with irritable bowel syndrome, 143 patients with organic upper gastrointestinal disorders and 222 patients with Crohn's disease of comparable age and sex. Significantly more patients with the irritable bowel syndrome (16%) had consulted practitioners of alternative medicine about their condition than had patients in either of the other groups. Similarly, significantly more irritable bowel syndrome patients said they would consult an alternative medicine practitioner (41%) if conventional treatment failed. Current usage of alternative medicine remedies was significantly greater in the irritable bowel syndrome patients (11%) than in patients with Crohn's disease (4%) and tended to be greater than in patients with organic upper gastrointestinal disorders (6%). This study has shown that the use of alternative medicine is common in patients with irritable bowel syndrome and this does not appear to be explicable in terms of the nature, chronicity or refractoriness to treatment of symptoms.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Unconventional medicine in the United States. Prevalence, costs, and patterns of use.

TL;DR: The frequency of use of unconventional therapy in the United States is far higher than previously reported and expenditure associated with use in 1990 amounted to approximately $13.7 billion, comparable to the $12.8 billion spent out of pocket annually for all hospitalizations in theUnited States.
Journal ArticleDOI

AGA technical review on irritable bowel syndrome

TL;DR: Psychosocial factors, although not part of IBS per se, have an important role in modulating the illness experience and its clinical outcome.
Journal ArticleDOI

Psychosocial factors in the irritable bowel syndrome. A multivariate study of patients and nonpatients with irritable bowel syndrome

TL;DR: In this paper, a multivariate analysis of the irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) was performed and the authors described the symptomatic and psychologic features of the condition and their possible contributions to health care seeking, concluding that the psychologic factors associated with the IBS are associated with patient status rather than to the disorder per se.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Long-Term Prognosis and the Physician-Patient Interaction

TL;DR: The irritable bowel syndrome is evaluated by following a cohort of patients from a community using their medical records, after they were initially diagnosed with IBS according to current criteria, to objectively assess whether the physicianpatient interaction was associated with prognosis.
Journal ArticleDOI

Management of the irritable bowel syndrome

TL;DR: Novel approaches include alosetron; a 5-HT(3) antagonist, tegaserod, a partial 5- HT(4) agonist, kappa-opioid agonists, and neurokinin antagonists to address the remaining challenging symptoms of pain, constipation, and bloating.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Towards positive diagnosis of the irritable bowel

TL;DR: It is concluded that a careful history can increase diagnostic confidence and reduce the amount of investigation in many patients with chronic abdominal pain.
Journal ArticleDOI

Bowel patterns among subjects not seeking health care. Use of a questionnaire to identify a population with bowel dysfunction.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors devised a brief selfadministered questionnaire which, when used among a group of 789 students and hospital employees, disclosed that 94.2% had stool frequencies between three per day and three per week, and that 17.1% had bowel dysfunction.
Journal ArticleDOI

Functional Bowel Disorders in Apparently Healthy People

TL;DR: Four clinically distinct functional bowel syndromes existed in almost one-third of the subjects studied, and constipation seemed to increase with age.
Journal ArticleDOI

Towards positive diagnosis of the irritable bowel.

S Pearson, +1 more
- 25 Nov 1978 - 
TL;DR: The prevention of cot deaths is dependent firstly on the recognition by parents of the significance of certain non-specific symptoms and on their decision to involve the primary care services, and secondly on the efficacy of medical intervention at this stage.
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