The role of Chinese traditional medical practice as a form of health care in Singapore. I. Preliminary study.

A retrospective study of 672 sampled records of patients of a major institution providing Chinese traditional medicine in Singapore reveals that 97.3% of the patients were Chinese, with a dialect group distribution following closely that of the Singapore Chinese. The male-to-female patient ratio was 1.0:1.13. There were fewer patients of the pediatric age group and more of those from age 30 upwards. Some 43% of the patients sought treatment for "infective" and "internal, emotional and weakness" diseases. The prevalent disease conditions seen among patients from the different age groups are also analyzed and discussed in this paper.