YOU MAY NOT BE AWARE that your patients are using complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), such as herbal products, acupuncture, and meditation. Although 42% of Americans report that they've used some form of CAM at least once, less than 40% of them informed their healthcare provider.1 These online resources will help you and your patients weigh the risks and benefits of CAM.
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
http://nccam.nih.gov
Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, this site is appropriate for both professionals and consumers. It contains information on clinical trials, alerts and advisories, specific diseases and conditions, and specific treatments and therapies.
National Cancer Institute's Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine
http://www.cancer.gov/cam
This site, aimed at both professionals and consumers, contains links to current research studies on cancer and CAM, peer-reviewed PDQ Cancer Information Summaries, and an A-to-Z list of CAM therapies.
Bandolier's Complementary and Alternative Therapies
http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/booths/altmed.html
Sponsored by Bandolier, an independent journal about evidence-based healthcare written by Oxford University scientists, this site gathers evidence-based reviews on complementary and alternative therapies from around the world.
Cochrane CAM Field: Integrative Medicine
http://www.compmed.umm.edu/cochrane.asp
From the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md., this site lists reviews and protocols on CAM treatments from the Cochrane Collaboration, a worldwide organization that prepares reviews of different kinds of healthcare therapies that are published in the Cochrane Library.
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmccomplementalternmed
This open-access online journal publishes peer-reviewed research articles on complementary and alternative healthcare interventions. Visitors can also search for articles on CAM from other BioMed Central publications.
Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org
From the Oxford University Press, the articles in this international peer- reviewed journal may be accessed through a keyword search.
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