• 1. The Second Clinical Medical College, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510405, P. R. China;
  • 2. State Key Laboratory of Dampness Syndrome of Chinese Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510120, P. R. China;
  • 3. Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510120, P. R. China;
  • 4. Science and Technology Innovation Center, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510405, P. R. China;
WEN Zehuai, Email: wenzh@gzucm.edu.cn; LI Geng, Email: ligeng@gzucm.edu.cn
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Objective  To summarize the current studies of the core outcome set of traditional Chinese medicine (COS-TCM) and analyze their possible problems. Methods  The CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases were electronically searched to collect studies from inception to April 18, 2023. The relevant characteristics of the included studies were extracted, and the development steps, stakeholders, and outcomes of COS-TCM were analyzed. Results  A total of 28 COS-TCM studies were included. Two studies, only published systematic reviews without providing more information, were excluded from the analysis. Among the 26 studies for analysis, 25 studies (96.15%) used a mixture of methods to develop COS-TCM. Clinicians (n=25) were the most common participants, followed by methodologists and patients. Fifteen studies (57.69%) reported measures to help patients better participate. Twelve consensus definitions were found in the included studies, of which 14 studies' consensus definitions were divided into three levels:"consensus in", "consensus out", and "no consensus". Among the 14 studies that reported the final COS-TCM results, only 4 studies recommended Chinese medicine characteristic outcomes. For the measurement of outcomes, 14 studies (53.85%) made plans for the selection of tools. Conclusion  The current COS-TCM research has made some progress, and the common developing methods are roughly the same as those nationally used. However, there are still some problems, such as inadequate and low-transparency reports, lack of TCM characteristic outcomes, and so on. We suggest that future COS-TCM studies should refer to COS-STAP, COS-STAR, COS-STAD, and other international standards as well as emphasize the advantages of TCM during development and reporting so that it can improve the transparency of developing methods, research quality, and the proportion of TCM characteristics of the final COS.

Citation: QIU Xingying, TANG Qi, CAO Wencong, LIU Bingqing, WEN Zehuai, LI Geng. A scoping review of the core outcome set research in traditional Chinese medicine. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2023, 23(12): 1419-1427. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.202306122 Copy

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