Quality evaluation of the research literature on the pharmacoeconomics of traditional Chinese medicines in China from 2018 to 2022 / 中国药房

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the quality of research literature on pharmacoeconomics of traditional Chinese medicine （TCM） in China from 2018 to 2022， to understand the development status and problems of TCM pharmacoeconomic research in China， and to provide a reference for future standardized research on this field. METHODS The systematic search of relevant databases at home and abroad was conducted to obtain the published literature on TCM pharmacoeconomic research in China from January 1， 2018 to November 21， 2022 to summarize the basic information of the literature， the research profile， the method and content of pharmacoeconomic evaluation and to evaluate the quality of the literature by using the CHEERS 2022 checklist； calculate the total literature score by counting the scores of the specific entries of each piece of literature and classifying the quality of the literature as excellent， good， qualified， and unqualified. RESULTS A total of 71 studies were included， involving 60 in Chinese and 11 in English， and 53.52% of the literature was supported by grants； the most studied TCM dosage form was injection （31.03%）； less than half （46.48%） of the literature reported the study angle； short-term economic evaluation was predominantly used （69.01%）； the Chinese studies were dominated by cost-effectiveness analyses （70.00%）， and the English studies were dominated by cost-utility analysis （54.55%）. The average score of literature quality evaluation was 11.02， with two （2.82%） of the literature being of good quality， nine （12.68%） of the literature being of qualified quality， and the majority of the literature （84.51%） being of unqualified quality. The average score of Chinese literature was 9.98， and the average score of English literature was 16.73， with the quality of the latter being significantly better than that of the former. CONCLUSIONS At present， the pharmacoeconomic researches of TCM mainly has problems such as lack of scientific selection of intervention in the control group， nonstandard cost measurement， unreasonable selection of research time limit， quality of evidence for health output indicators to be improved， selection of evaluation methods to be improved， and lack of scientific basis for threshold selection. In order to support the implementation and development of high-level pharmacoeconomics research on TCM， policymakers need to create a favorable policy environment and formulate pharmacoeconomic evaluation guidelines that meet the characteristics of TCM， so as to promote the application and transformation of evaluation results.