Controversies in Allergy and Allergy-Like Diseases

Abstract

The management of allergic diseases is accomplished most successfully and cost-effectively by the patient’s primary care physician in collaboration with a specialist in allergy/immunology. It is critically important to use methods of diagnosis and treatment that are based on sound scientific principles and that have been validated by proper clinical trials. Physicians who treat allergic patients therefore must be aware of the plethora of unproven and controversial methods that are currently promoted by a small group of practitioners, and they should understand the faulty rationale on which they are based. These unproven techniques and their unscientific, or even antiscientific, theories are sometimes deceptively labeled as alternative or complementary forms of medical practice. This implies some measure of efficacy that in fact does not exist.