Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 31, 2026

Alternative Therapy for Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Moving Cupping Along Meridians
Published on: September 27, 2024
Development and classification of an operational definition of complementary and alternative medicine for the
L Susan Wieland1, Eric Manheimer, Brian M Berman
1Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA. swieland@compmed.umm.edu
Abstract:
During the past decade, the Cochrane Collaboration has been an increasingly important source of information on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies. From 2007 to 2008, the Cochrane CAM Field developed a topics list that allowed us to categorize all 396 Cochrane reviews related to CAM (as of The Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2009). This topics list is an advance in making Cochrane reviews on CAM topics accessible to the public. In this article, we discuss challenges in developing the topics list, including developing an operational efinition of CAM, deciding which reviews should be included within the CAM Field's scope, developing the structured list of CAM Field-specific topics, and determining where in the topics list the reviews should be placed. Although aspects of our operational definition of CAM are open to revision, a standardized definition provides us with an objective, reproducible, and systematic method for defining and classifying CAM therapies.
Related Concept Videos
Drug Classes and Categories
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast, controlled...
Methods of Documentation VI: Case Management Model
For example, a patient with a chronic illness...
Therapeutic Drug Monitoring: Overview and Classification
Classification of Illness
An illness is a response to a disease in which the person's level of functioning is changed compared with a previous level. The general classification of illness includes acute and chronic.
Acute illness is severe and...
Methods Of Healthcare Delivery System
Managed Care System:
The managed care system is designed to control the cost while maintaining the quality of care. The patient's care from admission to discharge is planned by the primary care provider or the case manager, also known as the gatekeeper. In a managed care system, the number of care providers is limited...