AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF PAIN RELIEF MANAGEMENT THROUGH ALTERNATIVE MEDICINES

Abstract

Background: Besides the allopathic medications, alternative medicines can be applied for the pain management. These are massages, homeopathy, yoga, Ayurveda, acupuncture, mind body therapies. All these therapies are based on different mode of action to reduce the inflammation. Objectives: To find factors responsible in choosing alternative treatment for pain. Methods and materials: Objectives have been converted into multiple hypothesis. Convenience sampling technique has been used to collect the data from a sample of 200 patients in the health areas suffering from different types of pain. Chi square test and Independent t-test have been done to study the impact of type of treatment on various factors like level of pain, difficulty in diagnosis, proactivity towards health and coping. All these tests were analyzed with the help of Statistical Package for the Social sciences (SPSS). Results: There is no significant relation between demographic factors like gender, age, educational qualification, annual income, duration of pain, length of treatment, difficulty in diagnosis, number of health care providers, level of Pain and type of treatment. However, there is significant relation between number of medication along with natural medication and type of treatment. Conclusion: Gender, age, educational qualification, annual income had no relationship in deciding the type of treatment of pain. Further, the study also revealed that duration of pain and type of treatment also is not an important factor in deciding the treatment of pain. It may also be concluded that in case when the patients do not get relief, they switch to alternative measures.