Weight regain after Bariatric Surgery increases the request for Traditional Chinese Medicine Results from the cross-sectional BARBQTCM survey

Background: To investigate patient attitudes towards Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) after bariatric surgery with special emphasis on postoperative weight regain (WR).Methods: We retrospectively compared experiences with Complementary Additive Medicine (CAM) and the desire for additional TCM between patients with stable weight (SW) and WR by means of the disease-specific BARBQTCM survey during postoperative follow-up in a single bariatric center.Results: Out of 467 participating patients, 150 (32.1%) had WR after bariatric surgery. Median age was 49 years and 78.4% of the patients were female. 233 patients (49.9%) had already had experience with CAM and 125 (26.8%) with TCM. 381 patients (81.6%) were interested in using TCM at the time of the survey. Acceptance of TCM was lower in men (OR 0.35, P<0.01) and decreased with age (OR 0.95, P<0.001). Overall, the request for TCM was lower in the SW cohort compared to the WR group (77.3% versus 90.7%; OR 0.29, P<0.01). There was a positive correlation between preoperative experience with CAM and postoperative request for TCM (OR 5, P<0.001). The proportion of patients who were interested in outpatient TCM twice or more monthly was higher in patients with WR than in those with SW (94.0% versus 84.2%, P<0.01).Conclusions: The overall acceptance of CAM and TCM was high in our bariatric surgical patients. WR increased the rate of acceptance of TCM. We conclude that CAM and TCM should be offered during postoperative follow-up after bariatric surgery as part of an integrative medical approach.

New narration in practicing western integrative medicine: Linguistic, ecolinguistic, and biosemiotic aspects

Western science and academia have entered the new millennium with the growing realisation that their theoretical and utilitarian limits have been reached. A particular threshold is experienced across traditional academic disciplines, which is visible in the fact that, on the one hand, the intensity of social, environmental, psychological, health-related and communicational problems people deal with in their everyday lives is increasing; on the other hand, theoretical models and intervention programs that scholarly work provides do not meet the growing necessity. Our paper presents a research project whose starting-point aims are to explore the doctor-patient communication dyad, its functions in the healing process, and to propose a theoretical as well as applicative way forward. In the plans for our research, we aim to study the integrative medical approach and the ways in which language and communication processes allow healing to happen and optimal health to be preserved.