A Systematic Review of Herbal Medicine in the Treatment of Cirrhotic Ascites

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the trend in the research on cirrhotic ascites using t herbal medicine.Methods: This review was conducted using six electronic databases(NDSL, KMBASE, Koreantk, KISS, KISTI, KoreaMed) with no restriction in year. The search term was ‘liver cirrhosis’, ‘ascites’, or ‘cirrhotic ascites’, ‘herbal medicine’, ‘traditional Chinese medicine’, and ‘randomized clinical trial’, and there was no restriction in year. The searched studies were analyzed according to the type of research.Results: After scanning the titles and abstracts, 13 articles were ultimately included. Of the outcome measures of 13 studies, effective rate, liver function test, and ascites regression time were included in the meta-analysis, which showed that the effective rate of herbal medicine-supportive treatment combination therapy was 1.27 times higher than that of supportive treatment alone, and the difference was statistically significant.Conclusions: We analyzed the trends of cirrhotic ascites treatment in herbal medicine through this review. It is necessary to conduct further studies, such as well-designed clinical trials based on the results from experimental research.