Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Anestezi Dergisi, cilt.22, sa.3, ss.164-168, 2014 (Scopus)
Objective: Patients commonly take a combination of prescription drugs and herbal medicines. Often these alternative products have known pharmacological effects which may interact with drugs given perioperatively, resulting in adverse effects (1, 2). These herbal mixtures, which are known as natural herbal products, have been reported in cases as increasing morbidity and mortality. These herbal products must have effect on anesthetic and surgical method since they have that much side effects in daily usage. The purpose of this study is to raise awareness of medical specialists of herbal product usage in preoperative stage. Method: The study was performed on voluntary residents and specialists practicing in the Ankara Numune Education and Research Hospital following the approval received from the Ethics Committee. Apart from personal information such as age, gender, department and academic status, it was also investigated whether they use herbal medicine and recommend herbal medicines to their patients. The perioperative management strategies of patients who use herbal medicine were examined. The data obtained were analyzed using SPSS for Windows, version 20.0. The level of significance was set as p<0.05. Results: 150 medical doctors aged 24-60 participated in the study on voluntary basis. The maximum herbal medicine was observed in 40-49 age group attendants. The ratio of recommending herbal medicine was higher among attendants over 50, and among doctors who used herbal medicine. 4% of the participants stated that they had protocols for herbal medicines, 57% of the participants claimed that usage of herbal medicine should be avoided in preoperative stage but only 8.6% of doctors managed to answer the question regarding the period of stopping the use of medicine accurately. Conclusion: Anesthesiologists should obtain a history of herbal medicine use from patients and work out the adverse perioperative herb-drug interactions before the actual operation.