• Hui-Min Li, Xing Liao, Rui-Xue Hu, Dan-Dan Yu, Hao Gu, Le Wang, Hui Zhao, and Yun-Ling Zhang.
• Institute of Basic Research in Clinical Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Beijing 100700, China.
• Zhongguo Zhong Yao Za Zhi. 2020 May 1; 45 (9): 2210-2220.

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the selection situation of outcome indexes in randomized controlled trials of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke and to provide suggestions for future research. In this study, four Chinese databases and three English databases were searched from January 2017 to June 2019. The randomized controlled trials of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of ischemic stroke were selected according to the pre-established selection criteria. Cochrane bias risk assessment tool was used to evaluate the quality of the included studies. A total of 20 651 related articles were searched, and 11 662 ones were left after eliminating the repetitions. Finally, 42 articles were included, including 36 articles in Chinese and 6 articles in English, 40 randomized controlled trials and 2 registration schemes of randomized controlled trials. The results showed that the outcome indexes of 42 randomized controlled trials were mainly divided into seven categories, that is clinical outcome index, blood biochemical index, mental state evaluation index, cerebral hemodynamics index, index of evaluating the degree of carotid artery stenosis, safety indicators and other indicators. The blood biochemical index was the one with highest frequency, followed by the clinical outcome index. TCM syndrome score was used as an indicator of curative outcome in 17 studies. After the analysis, it was found that there were many problems in selecting the outcome indexes for the randomized controlled trials of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of cerebral apoplexy. For example, the end point index and hard index were rarely selected as the main outcome indicators, and the vast majority of them were intermediate alternative indexes; recognized curative effect could not be obtained; there were too many kinds of outcome indicators and excessive heterogeneity, hindering the promotion of superior treatment measures of traditional Chinese medicine in clinical practice. Therefore, we should draw lessons from the establishment method of the international core index outcome index set, construct the core index outcome index set of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of ischemic stroke, and develop the outcome index set which accords with the curative effect characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine treatment mea-sures to solve the problems effectively.

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