Attitudes towards vaccination: users of complementary and alternative medicine versus non-users

Principles: Children whose parents use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) often show it lower rate of vaccination than those of parents favouring coventional medicine. We have investigated whether this applies to the paediatric patients presenting to an emergency department in German-speaking Switzerland, where popularity of CAM is rather high. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was performed of paediatric patients presenting to an urban, tertiary paediatric emergency department. 1007 (63%) of the distributed 1600 questionnaires were available for analysis. Results: 12.7% of all respondents reported refusing some basic vaccination: 3.9% because of recommendation of the physician, 8.7% despite their physician's recommendation. Socio-demographic characterisation of the group of patients refusing vaccination showed older age of children, higher proportion of girls, more single-mothers families and decreased household income. Refusal of basic vaccination was significantly more frequent among CAM-users than among non-users (18.2% versus 3.5%, p < 0.001). The highest frequencies of refusal were reported by patients who consulted physicians practicing herbal medicine, anthroposophical medicine or homeopathy. Users and non-users of CAM however, showed comparable rates of immunisation in the case of the vaccinations against inasive meningococcal pneumococcal disease and flu. Surprisingly the rate for vaccination against tick-borne encephalitis Was higher in the CAM-users group than among the non-users (21.2%) versus 15.4%), p < 0.05). Conclusions: A considerable proportion of the study population (lid not fully accept basic vaccinations. Refusal to follow the basic vaccination schemata was more frequent among, CAM-users than non-users and reflected in most cases parental wishes rather than physicians' recommendations.