The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by a lot of myths and has given rise to many fakes: people around the world have been treated using dubious methods and believed conspiracy theories.
Alternative medicine has been especially popular – using garlic, breathing in bleach fumes, taking hot bath or drinking the Issyk-Kul root (aconite) tincture recommended by the head of the health ministry of Kyrgyzstan, despite its toxicity.
However, myths in medicine are related not only to the coronavirus infection, but also with such phenomena as:
- Sham medications – medications with unproved efficiency,
- Incorrect diagnoses,
- Overdiagnosis – false medical report proving the disease or its complications in a patient, but in fact the patient has none of them, or they are less significant than was specified in the report,
- Alternative medicine.
What is alternative medicine?
Alternative medicine includes the methods of treatment or prevention of diseases found ineffective or may not be verified scientifically.
What is evidence-based medicine?
Evidence-based medicine or in other words scientific medicine is the medicine based on evidence. In other words, it is the approach to medical practice, when decisions on using preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic interventions are made based on available evidences of their efficiency and safety, and such evidences are subject to evaluation, comparison, generalisation and wide distribution in favour of patients.
Evidence-based medicine suggests intentional, precise and fair use of findings based on the best of them in treating every given patient.
Evidence-based medicine disproves myths and proves the efficiency or inefficiency of the methods of diagnostics, treatment of various diseases and medications.
Let’s see some of the myths and test your knowledge of evidence-based medicine.
* The test was prepared with the counselling assistance of Bermet Baryktabasova, the expert in evidence-based medicine in the Kyrgyz Republic.
Main photo: iStock
This publication was produced as part of the mentorship programme under the Development of New Media and Digital Journalism in Central Asia project delivered by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) with support from the UK Government. It does not necessarily reflect the official views of IWPR oakyr the UK Government