1Department of Chinese Medicine, Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical
Foundation, Chia-Yi, Taiwan
2Department of Nursing, Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Chia-Yi, Taiwan
3School of Post-Baccalaureate Chinese Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan
4Department of Medical Research, Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical
Foundation, Chia-Yi, Taiwan
5Department of Nursing, Tzu Chi University of Science and Technology, Hualien, Taiwan
【Summary】
Background: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is commonly used for symptom relief in patients with chronic diseases. Nevertheless, large-scale surveys focusing on the utilization of TCM among patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) are limited, especially in Taiwan, where TCM is highly popular. This cohort study aimed to describe the utilization of TCM among Taiwanese AF patients.
Methods: All subjects were extracted from Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000, which was a subset of the National Health Insurance Research Database and contained all medical claims data for one million beneficiaries. Study cohort was comprised of the patients who had received a newly diagnosis of AF from 1998 to 2007. Controls were randomly selected from the remaining cases at a ratio of 1:1 frequency matched by age and sex. All subjects were followed up until the end of 2012, and were estimated the incidence rate ratio and the corresponding confidence interval with Poisson regression model.
Results: After adjustment for potential confounders, patients with AF were found to have higher utilization of TCM services than those without AF (1935.66 vs 1552.47, respectively, per 1000 PYs), with an adjusted IRR of 1.25 (95% CI:1.15-1.31).With regard to the commonly used categories of TCM, we found that herbal remedies (76%) constituted the most commonly-used therapeutic approach, followed by acupuncture alone (14%), and the combined therapy (10%).
Conclusions: The findings allow healthcare providers to identify the pattern of TCM use and commonly used therapeutic approaches among AF patients. Further research is required to fully address the efficiency and safety of TCM in treating AF patients.
Keywords:Atrial fibrillation, traditional Chinese Medicine, utilization, incidence density