A bibliometric approach to the alternative medicine in chronic pain

The aim of this study is to investigate the interest of science for the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in the chronic pain treatment using the number of articles registered by PubMed as an indicator.On Medline system with the key words: CAM and Pain 11.671 papers are available; 2.167 with thekey words: CAM and chronic pain; 192 papers deal with the topic chronic pain and dementia. The interest of science for CAM in chronic pain is increasing, but few studies deal with the epidemiological and psychosocial side of this phenomenon. Analogously, more and more studies deal with CAM utilization in dementia. More studies deal with the specifi c problem of chronic pain in dementia, but few include CAM referral for this topic.A different vision should be dedicated to CAM in chronic pain especially for a better understanding of patients' (and their families') needs.