DOES TREATMENT CHOICE VARY WITH DISEASE? AN ANALYSIS OF DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS AND DISEASE BURDEN

Treatment modality is broadly diverged into Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Conventional Medicine, comparable situation of which exists in India, resulting into choice practice by the patients and their relatives.However, while measuring preferenceof a treatment modality, itsdisease-specific dominance often remains unexplored. Especially there is a severe dearth of such data in the eastern Indian region. This study aims to explore whether treatment choice vary disease-wise among the population of Kolkata and its surrounding area and if the disease burden of self and family determine the choice of treatment modality.The study finds that CAM is preferred by 35.3% and used by 64.7% in last 12 months. People with Low Disease Burden(p=0.043) and those who make a decision in Group (p<0.001) tend to choose CAM. Higher Socio-Economic status and Higher Education Level (p<0.001) are significant Demographic Factors determininghigher level of CAM user. In contrast to most established studies, it is observed that Male gender(p= 0.026) has higher levels of CAM usage. City dwellers prefer and use Conventional medicine more than villagers or Suburbans. The study considers 6broad classifications of disease covering the majority of WHO ICD 10 chapters and finds that preference for conventional medicine is high for Infectious, Heart and Mental and Neurological disease ( p -value