Patterns and determinants of the use of complementary and alternative medicine: a cross-sectional study of hypertensive patients in Ghana
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is widespread and high utilization rates are associated with people who have chronic conditions like hypertension which management requires adherence to conventional treatment. Often however, the use of alternative medicines has been linked to negative health outcomes. The purpose of the study therefore was to evaluate the pattern, determinants and the association between CAM use and the adherence behaviour of hypertensive patients in Ghana. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted using 400 hypertensive patients attending Korle-bu and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospitals in Ghana from May to July, 2012. Information was gathered on the socio-demographic characteristics of patients, CAM use, and adherence using the 8-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS). RESULTS: Out of the 400 study participants, 78 (19.5%) reported using CAM with the majority (65.38%) utilizing biological based therapies. About 70% of CAM users had not disclosed their CAM use to their healthcare professionals citing fear and the lack of inquiry by these health professionals as the main reasons for non-disclosure. Males were 2.86 more likely to use CAM than females [odds ratio (OR) = 2.86 (95% CI 1.48-5.52), p = 0.002]. Participants who could not afford their medications had 3.85 times likelihood of CAM use than those who could afford their medicines [OR = 3.85 (1.15-12.5), p = 0.029]. In addition, a significant relationship between CAM use and experiences of anti-hypertensive side effects was observed, X2 = 25.378, p < 0.0001. CAM users were 2.22 times more likely to be non-adherent than participants who did not use CAM [OR = 2.22 (0.70-7.14), p = 0.176]. CONCLUSION: Hypertensive patients in Ghana have shown utilization for CAM. It is important that healthcare providers understand the patterns and determinants of CAM use among their patients. Intervention programmes can then be incorporated to enhance the desired health outcomes of patients.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | low |
| gpt | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | low |
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".