Clinical Evidence of Oral Chinese Patent Medicine for Ischemic Stroke： A Scoping Review / 中国实验方剂学杂志

ABSTRACT

The method of scoping review was used to systematically search and sort out the clinical research of oral Chinese patent medicines for ischemic stroke，to understand the scope of relevant research and the distribution of evidence. Three medical catalogs were manually searched to obtain the oral Chinese patent medicines used for ischemic stroke，and 7 databases were retrieved to obtain the clinical research including these oral Chinese patent medicines. Then the clinical evidence results were visualized by description combined with chart analysis. A total of 68 oral Chinese patent medicines were retrieved，and 1 392 articles were included，with 367 published in core journals， involving 35 oral Chinese patent medicines. The research types included randomized controlled trials，cohort studies，case series，case reports，secondary studies，adverse drug reaction reports，pharmacoeconomic evaluations，drug interactions，consensus or guidelines，non-randomized intervention studies and cross-sectional studies，of which randomized controlled trials had the largest number （283， 77.1%），followed by secondary studies and case series （25， 6.7% for each）. Among the 283 randomized controlled trials，there were 159 clinical studies in the acute phase of ischemic stroke，65 in the non-acute phase，and 59 in the unclear phase. Ten intervention control types and 20 outcome index types were summarized. Among them， the composite outcome index and surrogate outcome index were used 217 times （76.7%） and 245 times （86.6%）， respectively，followed by the degree of neurological impairment （three scales）. Future clinical research of oral Chinese patent medicines for ischemic stroke should clarify the stage of the disease，and the research design should specify the advantages of oral Chinese patent medicines intervening in ischemic stroke. Furthermore， publicly-recognized positive controls should be employed，and important clinical outcome indexes should be selected.