Patient compliance

Sir,

I read the article by Endrizzi and Rossi in the October 2006 issue of Homeopathy with interest.[ ¹ ]

In a similar, but smaller scale project a few years ago a medical student followed up 100 consecutive patients that I had seen. She sent a questionnaire to all 100 patients of whom 69 responded. Of these, 50% had attended one consultation only; a further 28% had attended less than 3 times. The reasons for not attending follow-up sessions were equally distributed between ‘homeopathic treatment had not helped’ or ‘better’. 16% said that treatment was too costly ([Table 1]).

Table 1 Reasons for not returning per follow-up (69 responses from 100 patients)

Improved, did not require further treatment	17
No effect	17
Treatment too expensive	11
Planning to return	24

The frequencies of visits to GPs were compared before and after homeopathic treatment. 29 people reported visiting their GPs less after receiving homeopathy, 10 saw their GP more. Nothing could be ascertained about those who did not return their questionnaires but it seems unlikely that responder bias would have occurred because the people questioned would have wanted it to be known if homeopathy worked for them or if they had wasted money on an ineffective therapy. The inclusion of a stamped addressed envelope encouraged people to reply.

The homeopathic patients had mostly attended just one consultation. The conclusion was (as for most other studies) that two thirds of patients treated with homeopathic remedies felt better.

• References

• 1 Endrizzi C., Rossi E., Leone C. Patient compliance with homeopathic therapy. Homp 2006; 95: 206-214.