Canadian Ophthalmologists’ Opinions Concerning Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Use in Glaucoma
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: Our goal is to investigate the opinion and practice pattern of Canadian ophthalmologists regarding the use of and recommendations for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) for their glaucoma patients. METHODS: Institutional review board approval for this prospective, cross-sectional survey was obtained from the Research Ethics Board of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. The survey was sent to all ophthalmologists in Canada electronically through the e-mail lists of 4 ophthalmology associations. RESULTS: A total of 241 ophthalmologists representing all provinces in Canada responded to the questionnaire. Twenty-two percent felt that CAM does have a role in glaucoma therapy with specialists being more likely to believe there is a role (P<0.05). Of the total respondents, 26% ask their patients if they use CAM with those in practice for <20 years more likely to encourage use (P<0.05). Of the respondents, 9% recommend CAM and if an ophthalmologist was in practice for <20 years he/she was significantly more likely to recommend CAM (P<0.01). Respondents (62%) in general do not discourage CAM with younger ophthalmologists (younger than 50 y, P<0.02) and ophthalmologists in practice for <20 years (P<0.05) being less likely to discourage CAM use. Respondents (41%) believe that CAM rarely ever affects compliance with ophthalmologists from an urban practice (P<0.01) and academic practice (P<0.05) more likely to deny effect on compliance. Respondents believe that CAM sometimes (46%) results in patient morbidity with ophthalmologists being in practice for <20 years believing that morbidity is less likely (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: A substantial minority of respondents believe that CAM has a role in glaucoma therapy, recommend its use, and ask their patients if they use CAM. Younger doctors are more likely to encourage alternatives; those in practice for <20 years are more likely to ask about alternative medicine use, recommend its use, and believe that morbidity usually does not result from the use of alternative treatments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
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 | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
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".