Integrative medicine defined

All devices incorporating, as an integral part, a substance which, if used separately, can be considered to be a medicinal product, as defined in Article 1 of Directive 2001/83/EC, and which is liable to act on the human body with action ancillary to that of the devices, are in Class III. 

Traditionally, one did a review of those studies writing a narrative about them and drawing conclusions based on the subjective evaluation of this information by the reviewer. A different way to write review articles, named meta-analysis, was introduced into clinical medicine by Chalmers. It has been defined as a systematic review of studies that uses quantitative statistical procedures to combine, synthesize, and integrate information across these studies . What this methodology does is take a group of... 

Essential medicines are defined by the WHO (2004) as "those that satisfy the priority health care needs of the population. .. selected with due regard to public health relevance, evidence on efficacy and safety and comparative cost-effectiveness." The important point is that, for this authoritative international public health body, "comparative cost-effectiveness" evaluation (or relative value to a community) is an integral part of the basic conception of an "essential" medicine. 

The CWC comprises a preamble, 24 articles and three annexes on chemicals, verification and confidentiality. It is remarkable for the comprehensiveness of its provisions. It covers the development, production, stockpiling and destruction of chemical weapons, defining a chemical weapon as any toxic chemical or its precursor that, through its chemical action, can cause death, injury, temporary incapacity or sensory irritation. Toxic chemicals are integral to modern industry and medicine on a... 

Figure 1 Five major CAM domains. NCCAM defines complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices as those not presently considered an integral part of conventional medicine. As CAM modalities are proven safe and effective, they may become adopted into mainstream medical practice. The five areas shown in the schematic represent but one way to array CAM approaches. Examples in each area are provided below (see NCCAM strategic plan at http //www.nccam.nih.gov for more details) ... 

In 1992, a group led by Gordon Guyatt at McMaster University in Canada first articulated the term evidence based medicine. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) was defined more recently as the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. Despite its recent recognition, EBM has probably always been practiced by health professionals, but what has changed is that the quality of evidence and the clinical benefit of applying it, are now looked at critically and systematically. 

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