Current Status and Evaluation of Randomized Clinical Trials of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Treatment of Cardiovascular Diseases

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine has long been applied to various diseases in China for a few thousand years. In recent years, its market has gradually developed from Asian countries to Western countries. At present, due to the lack of evidence-based medicine research, the effect of traditional Chinese medicine on the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease remains unclear. In evaluating the efficacy and safety of drugs, randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) are recognized as the gold standard for testing the effectiveness and safety of treatments and could offer the best evidence for the formulation of clinical treatment guidelines. Although traditional Chinese medicine has long been used to treat cardiovascular diseases, the research on the application of RCT to test the combination of traditional Chinese and Western medicine therapy or single traditional Chinese medicine therapy started late, and the number is comparably small. In order to summarize and objectively evaluate the research results of integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine in intervention of cardiovascular diseases, we reviewed the literature of RCTs in this field by searching some Chinese and English databases and put forward some suggestions for the future development and research of traditional Chinese medicine.