User-perceived effectiveness and safety of paediatric complementary and alternative medicines: perspectives from international, British and local Scottish outcomes studies.

Ndu, Okechukwu Obisike

Abstract

In the light of the current patient-centred approach to healthcare delivery, this research investigated the effectiveness and safety of paediatric complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) from the users' perspective in order to generate suitable data to inform healthcare policy and planning. The research was in three parts: a systematic review (SR), a database analysis and a survey. The SR of papers published on the topic from 2000 to July 2011 identified 46 eligible studies, conducted predominantly in the USA (14, i.e. 30%) - with only 5 UK studies (i.e. 11%), of which 2 were Scottish. Generally, their findings indicated a high report of positive health outcomes by CAM users and a low report of adverse outcomes. Critical appraisal, however, highlighted the low methodological quality of most studies, with an overall quality rating of 45%, and only 9 studies (i.e. 20%) possessing up to 8 of 12 quality indices. A tendency towards selective outcome reporting bias was also observed. The database research explored the suspected adverse reactions (ADRs) associated with paediatric use of natural health products (NHPs) as reported on the Yellow Card Scheme (YCS) from its inception until July 2012. The YCS data was mined to estimate the frequency and seriousness of the ADRs reported. NHPs were found to have contributed

Citation

NDU, O.O. 2015. User-perceived effectiveness and safety of paediatric complementary and alternative medicines: perspectives from international, British and local Scottish outcomes studies. Robert Gordon University, PhD thesis.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jul 16, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 16, 2019
• Keywords: Complementary and alternative medicine; Paedeatric medicine; User-perceived effectiveness; Patient-perceived effectiveness; Scotland
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/322199
• Award Date: Jun 30, 2015