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Hirudotherapy and its effect on human health
TONDLOVÁ, Andrea
Hirudotherapy is one of the alternative methods that is nowadays being experienced again. It is a very old method that was used in the Middle Ages, when healers placed a leech on the wound. The European medicinal leeche is used because its saliva contains many bioactive substances that help with vascular diseases, affect stomach secretion, and break down blood clots. Among other things, saliva of this leech has antibacterial, antibiotic and anticoagulant effects. The main aim of this thesis was to increase the awareness of people about hirudotherapy and its beneficial influence on the human organism. From this main goal, we set four other objectives, namely to map the opinions of respondents on hirudotherapy, then to map the effect of hirudotherapy on the health of respondents. The third one was to find out what information is required by respondents undergoing hirudotherapy and find out what knowledge and skills a nurse must have as a hirudotherapy therapist. The first part of the diploma thesis is theoretical, where we focus on definitions of individual terms, i.e. hirudotherapy, alternative medicine, etc. The latest news in this area are added in the individual chapters. In the research part of the thesis we evaluate the interviews conducted with the patients who have undergone hirudotherapy. The work is supplemented by individual case reports of patients and photographic documentation of each case. In addition, we are attempting to summarize the latest findings and trends in hirudotherapy with the intention of motivating the reader to believe that real scientific progress is taking place in this area, from which a positive shift in hirudotherapy can be derived in the future. The research part of the thesis was realized on the basis of a qualitative survey. Data was obtained through semi-structured interviews. Interviews with patients were conducted in three stages. In the first stage, we interviewed patients before hirudotherapy. The second stage was focused on interviews with patients during hirudotherapy, where we asked about the patient's concerns and feelings and informed about regimens after therapy. At the last stage after the end of the application, we evaluated the effect of hirudotherapy on the organism, whether the problem had improved and if so, whether to continue in hirudotherapy. The results of the survey show that in most cases, hirudotherapy patients were positively affected. Each patient experienced some improvement in health. If the problem had not been solved with hirudotherapy, we managed to improve something else in these patients. Surprisingly, most patients were actively seeking information about this issue before completing hirudotherapy. The results of this thesis point to the fact that hirudotherapy is largely unknown to most of the population. Most of the participating patients learned about hirudotherapy from us. For example, many of them thought that the leech only sucked blood and did not know its main function. Another important finding was that hirudotherapy should be performed by an experienced hirudotherapy therapist, in the best case a trained medical practitioner. In case of allergic reactions to hirudotherapy and high bleeding, various complications could be avoided.
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