1
Department of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University Hospital, No. 2
Yude road, Taichung 40447, Taiwan
2 School of Post-baccalaureate Chinese Medicine, College of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan
3 College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan
4 Management Office for Health Data, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung 40402, Taiwan
5 Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles 90095-1772, CA, USA
2 School of Post-baccalaureate Chinese Medicine, College of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan
3 College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan
4 Management Office for Health Data, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung 40402, Taiwan
5 Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles 90095-1772, CA, USA
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2015, 15:129
doi:10.1186/s12906-015-0645-0
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/15/129
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/15/129
| Received: | 28 October 2014 |
| Accepted: | 13 April 2015 |
| Published: | 23 April 2015 |
© 2015 Su et al.; licensee BioMed Central.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Abstract
Background
Chinese medicine is commonly used and covered by health insurance to treat symptoms
of uterine fibroids in Taiwan. This retrospective cohort study compared the consumption
of conventional western medicine and medical cost between Chinese medicine (CM) users
and nonusers among patients with uterine fibroids.
Methods
We extracted 44,122 patients diagnosed with uterine fibrosis between 1996 and 2010
from the National Health Insurance reimbursement database, which is a population-based
database released by a government-run health insurance system. Multivariate linear
regression models were used to find association between using Chinese medicine and
the consumption of conventional medicine, and between using Chinese medicine and medical
cost.
Results
The total fibroid-related conventional western medicine consumed by CM users was less
than that by nonusers (β = -10.49, P < 0.0001). Three categories of conventional medicines, including antianemics (-3.50 days/year/patient,
P < 0.0001), hemostatics (- 1.89 days/year/patient, P < 0.0001), and hormone-related agents (-3.13 days/year/patient, P < 0.0001), were used less in patients who were CM users. Moreover, although using
CM increased 16.9 USD per patient in CM users annually (P < 0.0001), the total annual medical cost for treating fibroid was 5610 USD less in
CM users than in nonusers (P < 0.0001).
Conclusions
Our results suggested that CM reduced the consumption of conventional medicine, and
might be a potential therapeutic substitute for conventional western medicines to
treat uterine fibroids with low cost.
