Reliability of chinese medicine diagnostic variables in the examination of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee

Abstract

Background: Chinese medicine (CM) has its own diagnostic indicators that are used as evidence of change in a patient's condition. The majority of studies investigating efficacy of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) have utilized biomedical diagnostic endpoints. For CM clinical diagnostic variables to be incorporated into clinical trial designs, there would need to be evidence that these diagnostic variables are reliable. Previous studies have indicated that the reliability of CM syndrome diagnosis is variable. Little information is known about where the variability stems from-the basic data collection level or the synthesis of diagnostic data, or both. No previous studies have investigated system..