Abstract

Objective: Respiratory system diseases are common in childhood and constitute an important part of hospital ad-missions. Families may have complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) applications to their children especially in respiratory system diseases. The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge levels of families about CAM and the CAM methods applied by the families of children who presented to the emergency room with the complaint of respiratory system.

Material and Methods: The families who agree to participate of children who had triage categories 4 and 5 according to the Pediatric Canadian triage scale applied to our pediatric emergency clinic between June 2017 and March 2018 were included in the study. Sociodemographic characteristics, knowledge level of CAM and the CAM methods they applied were questioned with a standard questionnaire to families.

Results: The median age (IQR) of 228 patients included in the study was 24.4 months (8.3 - 57.9 months) and 142 (62.3%) were male. Respiratory system complaints; the most common was dyspnea (50.9%), rapid breathing (21.5%) and cough (20.6%) and the median duration of complaints was 3 days. When the diagnoses were evaluated, 150 patients (65.8%) had bronchiolitis and 49 (21.5%) patients had asthma attacks. 112 (49.1%) patients had recurrent respiratory complaints. There were 62 (27.2%) patients with chronic disease and the most common chronic disease was asthma. Of the mothers, 176 (77.2%) performed CAM and were mostly using herbal products. As a herbal product; linden (50.9%), mint-lemon (40.8%) and carob (29.4%) were given to children by mother. In addition, 121 (53.1%) of the mothers used supporters to strengthen their immune system. CAM use was higher in families, having child with recurrent respiratory complaints or chronic diseases (p<0.05).

Conclusion: The use of CAM is common in families having children with respiratory system complaints especially recurrent complaints. Mostly herbal products and support products were used.

Keywords: Alternative medicine, Children, Complementary medicine, Pediatric emergency, Respiratory system illness

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Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

1.
Kurt F, Güvenir H, Asarkaya M, Buğa H, Yakut Hİ, Dibek Mısırlıoğlu E. Evaluation of the Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Children with Complaints of Respiratory System in the Emergency Department. Turk J Pediatr Dis [Internet]. 2019 Sep. 23 [cited 2025 Aug. 23];13(5):341-7. Available from: https://turkjpediatrdis.org/article/view/571