A preliminary study on the medical expenditure of Chinese medicine and integrative medicine treatment for influenza A (H1N1) in the fever clinics.

OBJECTIVE

To analyze the effectiveness of Chinese medicine and integrated Chinese and Western medicine for influenza A (H1N1) in the fever clinics and its relevant expenditure.

METHODS

A prospective survey on the clinical epidemic observation and follow-up was conducted from July 2009 to October 2009 with a self-developed questionnaire whose contents including the clinical data of the confirmed 149 H1N1 cases and their relevant therapeutic expenditure. The patients were assigned to the Chinese medicine group (22 cases treated by Chinese medicine alone) and integrative medicine group (124 cases treated by both Chinese medicine and Western medicine). The data were processed with descriptive analysis, t test and χ (2), and sum-rank test.

RESULTS

The proportion of clinical recovery of Chinese medicine group (81.8%) was higher than that of integrative medicine group (54.8%) with statistical significance (P=0.02). The average fever durations in both groups were 3.5 to 4 days, showing no significant difference (P=0.86). In the comparisons of average cost of Chinese herbs, drugs, therapies, and total cost, those of the Chinese medicine group were lower than those in the integrative group (P=0.01, P=0.00, P=0.00, P=0.00).

CONCLUSIONS

The H1N1 patients in the fever clinic who received Chinese medicine treatment had a higher clinical recovery proportion than those who received integrated Chinese and Western medicine treatment with lower medical cost. However, due to small sample size of the Chinese medicine group in the study, the conclusion needs further confirmation by studies with large sample size.