CTCC resource guide lists the best Web sites

Cyberspace is jam-packed with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) Web sites. Your patients are probably researching their medical conditions on these Web sites and barraging you with data and questions.

According to the National Research Council in Washington, DC, 30 million Americans used the Internet to search for health-related information in 1999, and it notes the Internet may revolutionize the health sector by connecting people, information, and services from anywhere across the country.

MEDLINEplus, the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) enormous research database of 11 million citations, opened in 1997, and usage has since skyrocketed from 7 million to more than 200 million searches a year.

"Consumers have powered that explosion because they are starved for medical information," says senior librarian Joyce Bacchus of the NLM in Rockville, MD, "and health care professionals can find the answers to their patients’ questions and keep themselves informed with a wide variety of resources so easily available nowadays."

With MEDLINEplus’ virtual library of research, textbooks, and scientific journals just a mouse click away from anyone with access to a computer, consumers are increasingly arming themselves with facts, figures, and probing questions prior to physician visits.

Increasingly, health care professionals find themselves facing patients armed with sheaves of computer printouts and batteries of questions.

Health industry researchers say 81% of the consumers who go on-line looking for health information are interested in learning more about alternative medicine, and NBC News recently reported that more than 83 million Americans have "embraced" alternative health care because of the attractiveness of greater control over their own health care.

While consumers may enjoy having this control and access to a wealth of information, many health care professionals are concerned about the quality of information being used by patients to make decisions regarding alternative treatments.

Proponents of integrative medicine recommend that conventional physicians and other health care professionals become familiar with complementary and alternative treatments that may enhance the level of care they are able to give their patients.

As CAM therapies become even more popular, many physicians feel it necessary to raise their level of continuing education in order to have a better understanding of the treatments that their patients may be receiving outside their office.

The questions remain: How do people interested in exploring treatment alternatives find the practitioners or products best suited to their needs, and how do health care practitioners glean valuable information from the voluminous resources available?

The editors of Complementary Therapies in Chronic Care have compiled a list of helpful Web sites containing valuable resources for professionals seeking to keep themselves informed and to do their own investigations of various therapies. Readers are invited to suggest additions to this list, which will be updated and reprinted periodically.