Wendy Wong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Title: When the east meet the west – Mapping of diagnoses between conventional and traditional Chinese medicine in clinical practice
Biography
Biography: Wendy Wong
Abstract
Background: Th ere is a global trend of Integrative Medicine (IM) to pursue the best interest of the patients by merging the conventional with the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, the communication between the 2 disciplines had not been well explored. To bridge the medical practice from the east to the west, the mapping of diagnoses between the 2 disciplines in Hong Kong serves the ideal platform for investigation. Aims & Objectives: To determine the mapping of diagnoses between conventional and TCM in primary care of Hong Kong. Methods: A cross-sectional study of prospective recording of all clinical encounters that presented to 260 Chinese Medicine Practitioners (CMP) were collected in 2012. All health presenting problems were coded by International Classifi cation of Primary care (ICPC) and the National Classifi cation of disease (NCCD) and Zheng (NCCZ) of TCM. Results: 55,312 encounters were collected from 260 CMPs. Most subjects (64.0%) consulted for chronic problems. Respiratory (24.9%) and musculoskeletal (22.7%) problems were the most common, and specifi cally cough (11.7%) and low back symptom/ complaint (6.6%) being the commonest complaints. Th e most common TCM diagnoses in the form of NCCD was internal medicine (65.1%). By NCCZ (i.e. syndrome diff erentiation), Zang Fu & Meridian syndrome (40.5%) was the most common Zheng found by CMP. Th e top 3 categories of NCCD were tendon injury (9.4%), infl uenza (8.8%) and cough (6.2%). Tendon injury was mainly diagnosed as injury, Meridian syndrome (14.7%). Infl uenza was mostly diagnosed as wind-cold syndrome (31.5%). Cough was mainly diagnosed as wind-heat syndrome (25.9%). Conclusion: Th is was the fi rst study to investigate the mapping between conventional and TCM by means of a morbidity patterns with the parallel coding from ICPC-2, NCCD and NCCZ (i.e. syndrome diff erentiation). To facilitate the goal of integrative medicine, this study allows a broad spectrum of understanding of terminology used between 2 disciplines.