Abstract
In the past decades, numerous clinical researches have been conducted to illuminate the effects of traditional Chinese medicine for better inheritance and promotion of it, which are mostly clinical trials designed from the doctor's point of view. This large-scale data mining study was conducted from real-world point of view in up to 10 years' big data sets of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in China, including both medical visits to hospital and cyberspace and contemporaneous social survey data. Finally, some important and interesting findings appear: (1) More Criticisms vs. More Visits. The intensity of criticism increased by 2.33 times over the past 10 years, while the actual number of visits increased by 2.41 times. (2) The people of younger age, highly educated and from economically developed areas have become the primary population for utilizing TCM, which is contrary to common opinions on the characteristics of TCM users. The discovery of this phenomenon indicates that TCM deserves further study on how it treats illness and maintains health.
Highlights
Along with rapid development of modern medicine, the role of traditional Chinese medicine in health care has received worldwide medical attention [1,2,3,4,5]
In order to objectively and accurately identify the characteristics of people who adhere to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) treatments, we explore all the key factors that may affect TCM visits in NBSPR and Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS) (The details of all factors can be referenced to Supplementary Table S1)
Traditional Chinese Medicine is the general name of all ethnic medicines in China, with a long history, systematic theory and unique techniques
Summary
Along with rapid development of modern medicine, the role of traditional Chinese medicine in health care has received worldwide medical attention [1,2,3,4,5]. (ii) Surprisingly, young, highly educated people, and living in economically developed areas have become the primary characters of population utilizing TCM. We found some interesting and important contradictory phenomenon during the development of TCM in China that may be summarized as “More Criticisms vs More Visits”: (i) the intensity of criticism increased by 2.33 times over the past 10 years, while the actual number of visits increased by 2.41 times in China. This phenomenon subverts the wide accepted thinking that only older people, those lack of modern medical knowledge, or people in economically underdeveloped areas tend to choose TCM treatment. The details are as follows: Medical visit data for 10 years in China: National statistical data of TCM
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