No guesswork with this alternative | |
Desktop guide to complementary and alternative medicine: An evidence-based approach. Ezard Ernst. Edinburgh: Mosby, 2001 (xv + 444 pp + CD-ROM). ISBN 0 7234 3207 4. |
Ever wondered which complementary therapies could be recommended based on a rigorous assessment of available evidence? This is the book that can provide the answers! It is a practical and transparent approach to presenting evidence on a wide range of complementary therapies, written by heavyweights in the field of complementary medicine and evidence appraisal.
The book consists of three main parts. The first provides a brief background of different therapies, including an account of the clinical evidence and a risk–benefit assessment. The second part deals with common conditions and summarises the evidence supporting the use of different therapies, along with overall recommendations. The third part of the book provides an account of the legal, ethical, economic, social and safety issues surrounding the use of complementary therapies, albeit from a Canadian, American, and European perspective. Perhaps the most useful aspect of the book is the provision of evidence summary tables for each medical condition. These tables enable readers to determine at a glance which therapies have been studied for each condition, along with an assessment of the weight of evidence, the direction of the evidence (either supporting or not supporting the therapy) and whether there are serious safety concerns. While certain to prove useful when deciding which therapy to recommend for a particular condition, it should be recognised that the authors have adopted an extremely conservative viewpoint. Therefore, pregnancy and lactation are considered as blanket contraindications, and all treatments are considered to have serious safety concerns unless proven otherwise. The addition of a CD that contains the entire contents of the book in a searchable format, along with hyperlinks to abstracts of the cited references from PubMed, further adds to its usefulness as a ready reference tool to support clinical decision-making. Marc Cohen
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