The Task Force for Evidence Reports (ER-TF) of the Japan Society for Oriental Medicine EBM Special Committee (second phase) prepared the “Kampo Chiryo Ebidensu Repoto Dai 2-han –RCT wo Shu ni Shite – Chukan Hokoku 2007 (Evidence Reports of Kampo Treatment 2nd edition - Focusing on RCTs- Interim Report 2007),” completed on 15 Jun. 2007 and the “Kampo Chiryo Ebidensu Repoto Dai 2-han – RCT wo Shu ni Shite – Chukan Hokoku 2007 ver 1.1 (Evidence Reports of Kampo Treatment 2nd edition - Focusing on RCTs- Interim Report 2007 ver. 1.1),” completed on 1 Apr., 2008 to publish on the homepage of the Society. However, these reports both included only references published between 1999 and 2005 and did not cover the overall randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in Japan.
On 1 June, 2009, the report compilation was re-titled the “Kampo Chiryo Ebidensu Repoto 2009 – 320 no RCT (Evidence Reports of Kampo Medicine 2009: 320 Randomized Controlled Trials [EKAT 2009]),” and included structured abstracts (SAs) of 320 RCTs and 1 meta-analysis published between 1986, when the specifications for the quality of Kampo formulations for prescription became as they are today, and the first half of 2008 as the complete version at that time.
In June 2009, the Japan Society for Oriental Medicine decided to continuously organize the EBM Special Committee (third phase). In the third phase of the EBM Special Committee, the Task Force for Evidence Reports (ER-TF) and the Task Force for Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG-TF), which had been independently working in the second phase, were combined into the Task Force for Evidence Reports / Clinical Practice Guidelines (ER/CPG-TF) to serve as a TF to carry on with the updating of the Evidence Report compilations.
The present version is titled “Kampo Chiryo Ebidensu Repoto 2010 – 345 no RCT (Evidence Reports of Kampo Medicine 2010: 345 Randomized Controlled Trials [EKAT 2010]),” and includes RCT references published approx. 1 year after EKAT 2009.
The titles, target references, and the number of structured abstracts are shown below by report version.
In the present version, the method for reference search has been partially amended. Previously, reference searches in the Cochrane Library (CENTRAL) used Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) such as “Medicine Kampo” and “Medicine Chinese Traditional.” However, MeSH searches only targeted Pubmed/Medline-derived references among references in the CENTRAL, which include Pubmed/Medline-derived references, EMBASE-derived references, and other hand-searched references. In the current version, therefore, the conventional search method was combined with free word search for references with a title or abstract including such words as “Kampo,” “Japanese,” and “herb.” As a result, search sources of some of the references included in EKAT 2009 have been added / changed to the CENTRAL.
Although previously only some of the reports were translated into English and published on the web, the present revision of the report compilation was to be published as a complete English version of EKAT 2010.
