Investigation of Reasons for Discontinuance of Kampo Medicines (Japanese traditional herbal medicines) and Improvement of Continuance through Better Instructions to Patients

抄録

Recently, Kampo medicines (Japanese traditional herbal medicines) have been contributing greatly to patient treatment but there have been cases in which the patient's symptoms deteriorated during treatment and they had to discontinue the Kampo medicines. We investigated the reasons for discontinuing Kampo medicines at our institute, and discussed the improvement of continuance through giving patients better instructions. The most frequent reason for discontinuance was aggravation of symptoms by the medicines and we determined this by making a classification of the reasons for discontinuation. The next most frequent reason for discontinuance was digestive tract-related and other symptoms, for example rash and/or itch, and diarrhea. Next, we examined these symptoms to see if they were related to the adverse effects of Kampo medicines.
Based on the results of our investigation, we devised measures for improving continuance for Kampo medicines. In 2004, when these measures were implemented, the annual number of cases of discontinuation decreased from 96 to 78. This resulted from the clarification of the reasons for discontinuance of Kampo medicines, and the improvement of pharmacists' instructions to patients.