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Ped Docs Told to Counsel Parents About Alternative Medicine

Don't be surprised if your pediatrician soon starts asking you what type of herb, vitamin supplement or alternative medical therapy you are using to treat your child.

In its first policy statement on the subject, the American Academy of Pediatricians is telling its 56,700 member doctors today to get more involved in counseling parents about alternative medicine. The group, representing the majority of all board-certified pediatricians, said doctors should become more aware of the vitamins, teas, herbs and procedures used outside mainstream medicine and should help parents evaluate the pros and cons of a particular therapy.

Although the academy focused its recommendation on parents of children with developmental disabilities and chronic disease, the policy extends to parents of healthy children, too.

The organization acknowledged that up to one-third of Americans have used alternative medicine in recent years and up to 50 percent of children with autism in the United States may have been given some alternative medicine.

Unconventional Autism Treatments in Spotlight

Parents are using vitamin supplements and other unproven biomedical treatments to treat children with autism, says Dr. Adrian Sandler, chairman of the academy's Committee on Children with Disabilities. Sandler is medical director at the Huff Center at Graham Children's Health Center in Asheville, N.C.

The unconventional treatments include the nutritional supplement dimethylglycine, a mixture of vitamin B6 and magnesium. In some cases, parents are getting prescriptions for antifungal medications for their autistic children in the belief that a fungus may be responsible for the disorder.

"So many parents of children with chronic illness and disability are choosing [alternative medicine] and quite often pediatricians aren't even aware of this," Sandler says. "I think this is mainly true because people in practice don't always ask what other treatments their patients are seeking.

"The goal of these guidelines is to encourage practicing pediatricians to continue working from a scientific perspective, to provide information on treatment options and to help protect against negative bias against alternative medicine."

Among the recommendations, the association is advising doctors to:

• Seek outside information and share it with families.
• Evaluate the scientific merits of specific approaches.
• Identify risks.
• Avoid dismissal of alternative medicine in ways that communicate a lack of sensitivity and concern.
• Guard against becoming defensive.
• Assist in monitoring a therapy if an alternative medicine is endorsed.

The recommendations are being published in the March issue of the medical journal Pediatrics. Although many pediatricians provided input and criticisms to the published policy statement, Sandler says no one involved challenged the idea that pediatricians should become more fluent in alternative medical practices.

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