title: Investigation into the influence of physician for treatment based on syndrome differentiation.
abstract: Background. The characteristics of treatment based on syndrome differentiation (TBSD) cause great challenges to evaluate the effectiveness of the clinical methods. Objectives. This paper aims to evaluate the influence of physician to personalized medicine in the process of TBSD. Methods. We performed a randomized, triple-blind trial involving patients of primary insomnia treated by 3 physicians individually and independently. The patients (n = 30) were randomly assigned to receive treatments by the 3 physicians for every visit. However, they always received the treatment, respectively, prescribed by the physician at the first visit. The primary outcome was evaluated, respectively, by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the TCM symptoms measuring scale. The clinical practices of the physicians were recorded at every visit including diagnostic information, syndrome differentiation, treating principles, and prescriptions. Results. All patients in the 3 groups (30 patients) showed significant improvements (>66%) according to the PSQI and TCM symptoms measuring scale. Conclusion. The results indicate that although with comparable effectiveness, there exist significant differences in syndrome differentiation, the treating principles, and the prescriptions of the approaches used by the 3 physicians. This means that the physician should be considered as an important factor for individualized medicine and the related TCM clinical research.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Basic Research in Clinical Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, No. 16 NanXiaoJie, DongZhiMenNei, Dong Cheng District, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Lijie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Baoyan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Shuhong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Liyun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Runshun
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Shiyan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Xuezhong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu