Randomized clinical trials on Eastern-Western integrative medicine for health care in Korean literature: a systematic review.
OBJECTIVE
To summarize and critically evaluate the evidence for and against the effectiveness of Eastern-Western integrative medicine (EWIM) for health care compared to Eastern medicine (EM) or Western medicine (WM) alone.


METHODS
Systematic searches were conducted on five Korean medical databases. Manual searches were also conducted through nine major Korean medical journals. Prospective randomized clinical trials (RCTs) were included if EWIM was tested for any type of conditions compared to EM or WM.


RESULTS
There were one hundred forty-one possibly relevant studies were identified, and seven RCTs were included. The risk of bias was high in most studies. The EWIM methods were compared with EM or WM in patients with pain conditions in four studies. These studies showed favorable effects of EWIM on pain reduction in patients with shoulder pain and chronic headache compared with EM, while the other RCTs failed to do so in traffic injury patients. Two studies tested EWIM in patients with Bell's palsy compared with EM and found acute functional improvement. An RCT comparing EWIM with WM in patients with acne showed a significant difference.


CONCLUSIONS
The results of our systematic review suggest that there is limited evidence for the superiority of EWIM over EM or WM in the treatment of pain and acute symptom improvement in patients with Bell's palsy. The evidence from our analysis was limited from the low number of RCTs included and the high risk of bias. Future RCTs appear to be warranted.
Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon, South Korea. drmslee@gmail.com
Myeong Soo
MS
Lee
Byung-Cheul
BC
Shin
Tae-Young
TY
Choi
Jong-In
JI
Kim
D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D055048:Integrative Medicine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017594:Publication Bias; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D056910:Republic of Korea; D016896:Treatment Outcome
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