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eCAM Advance Access published online on May 21, 2009
eCAM, doi:10.1093/ecam/nep044
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

How Much of CAM is Based on Research Evidence?

Edzard Ernst

Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, Exeter, UK

The aim of this article is to provide a preliminary estimate of how much CAM is evidence-based. For this purpose, I calculated the percentage of 685 treatment/condition pairings evaluated in the ‘Desktop Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine’ which ere supported by sound data. The resulting figure was 7.4%. For a range of reasons, it might be a gross over-estimate. Further investigations into this subject are required to arrive at more representative figures.

Keywords: Complementary and alternative medicine – effectiveness – evidence – evidence-based medicine

For reprints and all correspondence: Edzard Ernst, Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, 25 Victoria Park Road, Exeter EX2 4NT, UK. E-mail: edzard.ernst{at}pms.ac.uk

Received February 13, 2009; accepted April 23, 2009


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