Unconventional Medicine in Central Europe: A Misuse of Public Health Insurance?

Author(s): HEROLD, M.

Abstract: Objective: To scrutinize the presumption maintained by critics that patients seeking medical treatment at a health resort may be more motivated by the prospect of a pleasant sojourn paid for by health insurance than by the impairment caused by a disease.Design: Variables for mobility (occiput-to-wall distance, cervical rotation, chest expansion, thoracic flexion, lumbar flexion, and finger-to-floor distance) and C-reactive protein were determined in 181 patients (male 134, female 47; age 52.4 ± SEM 0.8 years) with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) whose costs were covered by their health insurance (group A) and in 77 AS patients (male 66, female 11; age 51.6 ± 1.2 years) who paid their own costs (group B).Subjects: A group of 258 patients with AS presenting for 3- or 4-week speleotherapeutic radon treatment at the Gasteiner Heilstollen Hospital, a medical institution located at Badgastein in the Austrian Alps.Results: After Bonferroni correction for multiple calculations no significant difference was seen between the two groups.Conclusions: The results suggest that patients presenting for medical treatment at a health resort suffer a like degree of disease impairment, whether they pay their own costs or not. There was no evidence that seeking treatment at a health resort may be an attempt by patients to misuse the health insurance for 'sponsored" holidays.

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