survey
carried out last year by NIKKEI Medical, a leading Japanese publication
in the healthcare field, found that an impressive 76.8% of responding Japanese
physicians prescribed Kampo medicines for their patients. This finding reveals
a sharp increase in usage since the last survey of this type was carried
out in 1989. Data for the survey were obtained from 426 valid responses to a question-naire sent to 2,000 physicians randomly selected from readers of the journal. One of the most interesting results of the survey was the high percentage of younger physicians prescribing Kampo medications. An impressive 83% of doctors in their 40's reported that they utilized Kampo, as did an even higher 86.7% of doctors in their 30's.
The great majority (92.9%) of the physicians prescribing Kampo began doing so after Kampo drugs were listed in the National Health Insurance drug price standard in 1976. The most commonly expressed reason for using Kampo was that western-style medical treatment for the condition in question was not effective.
Of the 319 physicians who gave overall evaluations of the introduction of Kampo medicines, 60% expressed satisfaction, with 74.6% of these citing the wide range of available drug therapies offered by Kampo medicines. By contrast, only five physicians evaluated Kampo medications as unsatisfactory.
Kampo medicines were prescribed to five or fewer patients a day by 63.4% of responding physicians. Of those, approximately 47% prescribe western medicine in the majority of cases but consider the Kampo prescription to be the first-choice drug in some cases. Nearly 30% said they turn to Kampo medicines if the expected effect of western medicine is not achieved, indicating that Kampo is widely used to augment western-style therapies.
Looking to the future, 46.5% of the respondents foresee Kampo medicines becoming "of greater importance" in medical treatment. In assessing the creation this year of Oriental medicine courses at the Tokyo Women's Medical College and Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University, 32.1% of respondents regarded the moves as "good timing," and 14.8% believe such courses should be offered at other universities as soon as possible.
Among the diseases or conditions physicians most frequently treated with Kampo medicines, hepatitis and other liver diseases ranked first, being mentioned by 59.8% of respondents. Kampo was prescribed by 45.3% of respondents for common cold/upper respiratory inflammation, for menopause (43.7%), autonomic imbalance (38.3%), hepatic dysfunction (27.8%) and allergies (25.3%). Other frequently mentioned indications included constipation, bronchial asthma, gastritis, lumbago, and dermatitis.