Philosophical pondering upon merging traditional Chinese medicine into systemic medicine
Ke LIANG, Zhi?Jun SHU
(Department of General Surgery, Shanghai Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai 200082, China)
ABSTRACT Traditional Chinese medicine is one of the component parts of the international health care system. It has been an inevitable trend to merge traditional Chinese medicine into systemic medicine. Along with the emergence of the concept of systemic disease, the wide dissemination of evidence?based medicine and the establishment of thought pattern of systemic medicine, the exploration emphasis of modern medical science has been transferred from microcosmic or solid structure to macrocosmic unit and system relation. The mainstream development of modern medical science is to integrate different medical systems into a complete system. Therefore, the integration of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine is also necessary under this condition.
KEY WORDS medicine, Chinese traditional; system theory; philosophy, medicine
1997年,Sackett教授在Evidence?based medicine: How to teach and practice EBM专著中提出了EBM的概念,即自觉地、公正地、正确地根据所有最好的证据来决定对每一例病人做出治疗选择。因此,传统的医学实践与EBM区别的关键就在于对证据的定义和定位不同。与医学实践和决策相关的证据是多层次的,有些证据是可靠的,有些是不可靠的,有些是直接相关的,有些是间接相关的。因此,EBM强调“最佳证据”。遵循最佳科学证据进行医学实践应该成为一种有组织、有系统、有意识的行为,也应当成为医学实践的主流。20世纪90年代以来,收集全世界高质量的临床随机对照试验(randomized controlled trial, RCT)进行系统评价(systematic review或meta?analysis),已经成为判断疗效的最高级别证据。
近年来,系统医学得到了迅猛的发展。如美国国立卫生研究院(National Institute of Health, NIH)制定了通向医学生物学未来的NIH研究路线图(NIH roadmap),强调未来的主要目标是进行复杂生命系统的“大科学”系统研究[1]。被喻为临床医学“人类基因组计划”的Cochrane协作组,则搜集、总结和传播最佳医学证据,并将系统评价结果通过Cochrane图书馆向全世界传播[2,3]。中医学作为世界医学体系的重要组成部分,在科学日益走向多元化和整体化的今天,融入系统医学将是必然的趋势。
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