Abstract

Both Western and Chinese medicine have their own advantages in treating chronic osteomyelitis. In this study, we investigated the methods and clinical effect of chronic osteomyelitis treated by integrated Chinese-Western therapy. This is a prospective study. A total of 121 cases of chronic osteomyelitis (treated in the Military Training Medicine Institute hospital from January, 2002 to February, 2010) were divided into three groups, respectively treated with methods of traditional Chinese medicine, methods of Western medicine and integrated Chinese-Western therapy. All the patients were followed up and ranged from 8 to 56 months, with an average of 30 months. The total effective rate of the cases treated with methods of traditional Chinese medicine was 66.7%, cases treated with methods of western medicine was 54.8%, cases treated with integrated Chinese-Western therapy was 88.9%; the average period of hospitalization of cases treated with methods of traditional Chinese medicine was 59.3 days, cases treated with methods of western medicine was 74.6 days, cases treated with integrated Chinese-Western therapy was 43.7 days. There was a significant difference between the first two groups and the last one in terms of effective rate and average period of hospitalization. It is conspicuously effective to treat chronic osteomyelitis with integrated Chinese-Western therapy, which proved to be more powerful in improving recovery rate and reducing period of hospitalization than pure methods of traditional Chinese medicine or pure methods of Western medicine.

Key words: Chronic osteomyelitis, integrated Chinese-Western therapy.