Bridges towards integrated medicine–Evaluating treatment for complex patients

Introduction: The Center for Psychosomatic Medicine, Eikenboom, located in Zeist (near Utrecht), is the only specialized tertiary referral clinic for patients with severe chronic psychosomatic diseases in The Netherlands. This complex and often severely handicapped subgroup is known to be highly treatment resistant.

Little is known about this particular population. Our center developed a standardized treatment protocol which consists of high-level therapeutic integration at several levels.

We joined a Dutch Standardized Evaluative Project (STEP) to evaluate the outcome of treatment in terms of patients’ satisfaction, symptom reduction, quality of life, and reduction of health care consumption within two years following treatment.

Methods: The following questionnaires were used: SCL–90, EQ 5D and the Tic-p. Also, overall contentment with the treatment was measured by the GGZ-thermometer. For statistical analysis repeated measures have been used.

Results: Among all patients, there was a decline in anxiety, somatization and pain. Moreover, the quality of life had increased, health care consumption had decreased, and the patients’ appreciation of the treatment was high.

Conclusion: even for complex and severely handicapped patients with chronic somatoform disorders, treatment is possible and our integrative treatment shows to be effective.

Key words

severe_somatoform_disorders; assessment; evaluation_treatment