- Complementary and alternative medicine in infertility
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Azam Rahmani,1,*
1. Dr.
- Introduction: Although there is little information available to quantify the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), growing evidence suggests that CAM prevalence among patients seeking infertility treatment is increasing worldwide. The aim of the present study is to review studies focused on Complementary and alternative medicine in infertility.
- Methods: Comprehensive searches of peer-reviewed papers were conducted via databases including Google scholar, PubMed, Science direct, and ISI Web of Science; from 2009 to 2019. A comprehensive set of search terms was used to avoid missing potentially relevant material. Only published articles that were available in English, qualitative or quantitative, RCT, quasi clinical trial or longitudinal and focused on complementary and alternative medicine in infertility were included. Studies excluded if they were not population-based and non-English.
- Results: 62 papers were found in the first step and finally 14 of them extracted based on relevancy to the topic. Herbs and spiritual healing are widely used among patients in adjunct to conventional medical interventions. Most studies assessed a variety of CAM modalities met inclusion criteria. Several studies that focus on acupuncture, selenium supplementation, weight loss and psychotherapeutic intervention showed beneficial effect but more interventions had been studied less and evidence for them was limited. Cultural beliefs regarding using CAM by infertile patients showed participants' CAM use was consistent with cultural traditions of health and fertility: Westerners relied primarily on biomedicine and used CAM mainly for relaxation, whereas non-Westerners' CAM use was often influenced by culture-specific knowledge of health, illness and fertility.
- Conclusion: Although there is preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of some CAM interventions among infertile patients, many of these interventions require further investigation before they can be considered for routine clinical use. As CAM use is prevalent among patients, there is a clear need for health providers to become more aware of this phenomenon and for further research in this field.
- Keywords: Complementary Medicine, Alternative Medicine, Infertility