Background
Chronic renal disease is considered a main public health problem due to its high prevalence in the population. The solution of choice currently available is kidney transplantation but when this option is not available, blood purification treatments, notably haemodialysis (HD), are necessary. The presence of chronic renal disease combined with this demanding medical procedure leads to a hard symptomatology. To face this situation, HD patients often resort to complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) as they perceive that the healthcare professionals arenât paying enough attention to their quality of life.
Given this background, we aim to describe the prevalence and the type of the CAM used among HD patients and their possible relations with patientsâ symptomatology and quality of life.
Methods
We interviewed 122 patients, undergoing hemodialysis in three hemodialysis centers in French-speaking Switzerland, about the presence of symptoms, their quality of life, and the possible use of CAM. Cluster analysis was used to create patientsâ profiles about CAM use and regression analysis to explore the links between symptomsâ presence, patientsâ quality of life, and CAM use.
Results
Our results show a large use of CAM: almost two HD patients out of three uses at least one CAM. Using cluster analysis, we were able to identify five patientsâ profiles: non-users (37.5% of our sample), users of herbal medicine (20.5%), users of prayer-based practices (18.2%), people mainly using massages (9.1%), and a residual group including the users of other CAM, with a predominance of meditation (14.8%). As expected, we observe a negative relation between the number of declared symptoms and patients' quality of life. Contrarily, we observe no relation between the use of CAM and the presence of symptoms. Our results show a positive relationship between the use of CAM and patientsâ overall perception of health as well as the psychological dimension of their quality of life. No relationship is observed with other dimensions of quality of life, notably the physical dimension.
Conclusions
Our results suggests that CAMs arenât used as a substitute of official medicine but as a parallel support to HD patientsâ quality of life.