[The viewpoint of complementary medicine]

Patients have more therapeutics choices than ever before--at least theoretically--and they demand the choice. On the othe hand, physicians are increasingly obliged to treat their patients according to guidelines. In these guidelines, complementary medicine is usually underrepresented, due to the frequent argument that adequate studies are supposedly lacking. Indeed, compared to the enormous number of studies with chemically-defined drugs, the investigational activity in complementary medicine is rather limited. This is based o methodological and especially financial problems, but excellent studies are nonetheless available. The rules of free-market economy are being increasingly applied in medicine. This may result in the fact that patients change to a status of consumers who are no longer aware of their true necessities, with physicians changing into a status of mere wish fulfillers. However, recent studies show that the patients already react against this trend by either emphasising their autonomy and self-responsibility, or by switching to therapeutic strategies (including complementary therapies) independent of their physicians. In both cases, the use of physician-based complementary medicine can be a supportive and stabilising measure in the treatment process. Therefore, these measures should be mentioned more frequently in medical guidelines.