Complementary and alternative medicine: what place in geriatric medicine?

Abstract

This article is about the development of complementary and alternative medicine in geriatrics. He questions the meaning of his practices - and more broadly that of relational and non-drug care - as well as their application in the field in the aging sector. Indeed, the promotion of non-drug therapies by the high health authority, the growing role of actors in relational care or the emergence of practices complementary attest to a new dynamic of care in favor of a more global approach to support. If this dynamic was initially deployed in oncology, through supportive care, other sectors - and in particular geriatrics - are opening up to these practices in a logic of personalization of care. As such, the establishment of centers of activity and adapted care reflects a new model of support specific to aging focused on the specific needs of people weakened by age and disease. This work responds to the need to better understand this field as a whole and to highlight the plural issues, societal or medical, scientific, in connection with the process of their integration in geriatrics.