Homeopathy : the journal of the Faculty of Homeopathy
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
The feasibility of a randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trial of homeopathic treatment of depression in general practice.
Depression is common in general practice and lack of concordance is an important problem in its treatment. Homeopathy has few side effects and is generally associated with good compliance. We report a study investigating the feasibility of a trial to compare the effectiveness of homeopathy with a conventional antidepressant and placebo. ⋯ A trial of this design in general practice is not feasible, because of recruitment difficulties, many of them linked to patient preference. Different approaches are required to recruit adequate patient numbers to trials of this sort.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Adjunctive homeopathic treatment in patients with severe sepsis: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in an intensive care unit.
Mortality in patients with severe sepsis remains high despite the development of several therapeutic strategies. The aim of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was to evaluate whether homeopathy is able to influence long-term outcome in critically ill patients suffering from severe sepsis. ⋯ Our data suggest that homeopathic treatment may be a useful additional therapeutic measure with a long-term benefit for severely septic patients admitted to the intensive care unit. A constraint to wider application of this method is the limited number of trained homeopaths.