Evaluation of Clinical Efficacy on Acute Pancreatitis Treated with Combination of Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine: A Meta-Analysis

Objective: Meta-analysis was conducted to assess whether combination of traditional Chinese and western medicine could enhance clinical outcomes compared to single western medicine in the treatment of acute pancreatitis (AP). Methods: This systematic review will include prospective and retrospective comparative studies in all languages and evaluate the clinical efficacy of integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine versus single western medicine in treatment AP. Animal studies will not be considered. Published articles were acquired from Jan. 2001 to Dec. 2017 by a comprehensive search in Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure database (CNKI), Chinese WANFANG database. Exclusion criteria were non-comparative studies, hybrid treatment. The main points include clinical efficacy; carefully evaluating and reviewing the literature and filtering the literature according to inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria. Statistical analyses were performed using software Review Manager (Version 5.0). Publication biases of main results were examined by Stata 12.0. Results: 1262 cases of 1342 cases were effective and the effective rate reaches 94.04% in the group of integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine, while 949 cases of 1223 cases were effective and its effective rate can be up to 77.60% in the group of single western medicine (P > 0.05%, I2 = 0%, Odds Ratio (OR) = 4.98, 95% CI = 3. 79 - 6.54, P < 0.01.). Conclusion: These results suggest that the therapeutic effects of integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine on AP are better in treatment of AP than that of western medicine alone.