Use of Alternative Folk Medicine by Hepatoma Patientsand the Associated Factors

Abstract

Background : Many patients of chronic diseases in Japan use folk medicine in addition to the Western medicine. The situation has caused much controversy in the clinical fields regarding its advantages and disadvantages. The purposes of this study are to identify the situation where hepatoma patients use alternative folkmedicine. Methods : We conducted questionnaire survey of 500 chronic liver disease patients. The numbers of responders were 413 (82.6%), who were then analyzed. This paper reports the result of 69 hepatoma patients 46 male, 23 female, average age 67.3 (SD ± 8.5) years old. Results : About seventy percent of patients had used folk medicine some time in the past up until the time of survey. The folk medicine they had used includes “Indian Saffron” (64.6%), “Megusuri-no-ki” (41.7%) and Chorella (22.9%). The purposes of the use are to promotion of health (33.3%) and to improvement of symptoms (27.1%). Only 14.5% of them had consulted their doctor on folk medicine before using them. The authors studied the relationship among frequency, gender, age, and satisfaction to the medicine, perception of severity, religion and truth telling status. The frequency was 85.7% for the patients younger than 65, 71.4% for those between 65-74, and 38.5% for those over 75. There is a significant negative correlation between age and frequency (p<0.01). Another significant positive correlation the authors identified is between perception of severity and frequency (p<0.001). Conclusions : Many of hepatoma patients were found to be on folk medicine at one time or other. It is our responsibility as medical professions that we show guideline concerning use of alternative folk medicine so that patients can better coordinate Western medicine and folk medicine.