Report C Traditional Chinese medicine in the management of patients with SARS in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region — a case-control study of 24 patients

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is not the first-line treatment for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). From May 2003, 48 inpatients received individualized TCM treatment, of whom 24 were successfully matched to 107 controls with comparable age, sex, comorbidities and disease severity. Relative to the matched controls, survivors of SARS who had received complementary TCM benefited by needing a shorter hospital stay (a reduction of 4 days, p 21 days after onset of symptoms), was not significantly different from that in matched controls. SARS patients who received TCM treatment benefited from improvements in symptoms including fatigue, dry mouth, dyspnoea and loose stools. Shortening of hospital stay was most marked in patients who first received TCM treatment < 28 days after onset of symptoms, suggesting that early provision of TCM care in SARS patients may be most beneficial for patients. The benefit of requiring less steroid treatment was observed in all patients treated with TCM regardless of when treatment started. Our results indicate that SARS patients treated with TCM benefited from shorter hospitalization, a substantial decrease in steroid administered, and improvement of symptoms.