Therapeutic Health Dictionary

In anticancer therapy, this is the ratio of a dose of the treatment agent that damages normal cells to the dose necessary to produce a determined level of anticancer activity. The index shows the e?ectiveness of the treatment against the cancer.... therapeutic index

The general name applied to di?erent methods of treatment and healing.... therapeutics

A method of treating drug dependence and alcohol dependence, and some personality disorders, that entails patients living together as a group in a nonhospital environment, usually under supervision. (See also social skills training.)... therapeutic community

a common misunderstanding on the part of patients involved in a research trial that they themselves will benefit from its findings. Researchers and recruiters for research have an ethical duty to check for this misunderstanding and to correct it wherever possible. If they do not, the principle of *informed consent may be breached.... therapeutic misconception

the entitlement of a doctor to withhold information from a patient when it is feared that disclosure could cause immediate and serious harm to the patient (e.g. because he or she is suffering from severe depression). In exceptional cases, the need to withhold information may be considered to override the requirement to obtain informed *consent before proceeding with treatment. In such a case therapeutic privilege could be used as a legal defence against the charge of *battery or *negligence. If doctors are intending to invoke the concept of therapeutic privilege they must be prepared to justify their decision. Furthermore, while it was once quite common for doctors to withhold bad news or upsetting information from patients for *paternalistic motives, it is now considered a breach of the patient’s *autonomy and the ethicolegal justification for invoking therapeutic privilege where a patient has *capacity is, if it exists at all, extremely limited.... therapeutic privilege