Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use in Slovakia: Results of a National Population Survey

Ivan SouÄ Ek and Roman Hofreiter

SAGE Open, 2022, vol. 12, issue 1, 21582440211068480

Abstract: The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in Europe has intensely increased in recent decades. To acquire information about the patterns and trends of CAM use in Slovakia, a nationwide representative survey was conducted on Slovakian adult population. A nationally representative cross-sectional survey was administered to the general population of Slovakian residents aged 18 years and over. The respondents were interviewed face-to-face by professional interviewers. Data were collected during September 2019 as a part of an omnibus survey on a variety of subjects. Altogether, 82.4% of the respondents reported either regular CAM method use or the lifetime prevalence of such use. The most frequently reported group of methods were biologically based treatments (78.9%), followed by manipulative and body-based methods (54.4%), mind-body interventions (31.9%), whole medical systems (18.2%), and energy therapies (4.2%). Vitamins (71.1%), herbal teas (68.1%), massages (53.6%), religious healing (20.3%), and special diets (18.8%) were the five most commonly preferred CAM modalities. Female gender, higher income and higher education are significant predictors of CAM use. The study highlights the association between satisfaction with healthcare systems, health situations, and the use of CAM.

Keywords: CAM; Slovakia; nationwide survey; predictors; adult population (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440211068480 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:12:y:2022:i:1:p:21582440211068480

DOI: 10.1177/21582440211068480

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().