Quality of alternative medicine--complications and avoidable deaths

Patients with diseases, known to respond well to treatment within the conventional medical system, may be adversely affected if treatment with alternative medicine is given instead. In order to analyse to what extent this may occur in Sweden, a mail survey was carried out. Two hundred and forty-two heads of departments of pediatrics, internal medicine, rheumatology, neurology and oncology were asked to supply case reports where such alternative treatment had resulted in either a delay of diagnosis of a disease, where effective therapy was available, or in substitution of effective conventional therapy with alternative medicine. Eighty-four out of 233 clinics reported 123 cases from the period 1984-1988, most of them from internal medicine. Six patients died following alternative treatment and 27 had to be treated in intensive care units after severe complications of alternative treatment. In most cases health resort managers had withdrawn effective medication or instituted vegetarian diets for patients with severe catabolic conditions, such as collagen diseases, renal insufficiency or inflammatory bowel disease. Twenty-three children had been treated by alternative medicine in violation of the Swedish law against quackery, but legal action had not been taken in any case. The study, which, by design, may only reveal the tip of an iceberg, suggests that apart from the well-known direct complications, associated with alternative treatment, such treatment may further prevent patients from obtaining.