BackgroundModern palliative care began in the hospice movement led by Dr. Cicely Saunders. In Korea, it was started earlier but built the foundation recently regarding Korean medicine (KM). In 2015, the strategy for development of KM was established. It included the guidelines of cancer-related fatigue and anorexia.ObjectivesThe aim was to figure out the current state of hospice·palliative care (HPC) and evaluate the effectiveness of KM in terms of HPC.MethodsSystemic reviews published until Feb 2017. Literatures in international journals were searched on PubMed, MEDLINE, ScienceDirect and CINAHL; and articles in Korean journal on OASIS operated by the Korean Institute of Oriental Medicine. Keywords were palliative care with acupuncture, moxibustion and herb medicine in English and Korean.ResultsThe results in acupuncture, moxibustion and herb medicine were 19, 3 and 15 respectively. First, acupuncture was effective to relieve nausea and vomiting, anxiety, cancer-related fatigue and leukopenia. Second, moxibustion was helpful for treating nausea and vomiting, cancer-related fatigue and leukopenia. Third, herb medicine was beneficial to improve quality of life and make the scales of immune system better. But there were some conflictive outcomes about other symptoms. Nevertheless, our view was there was no or slight adverse effect and most patients treated with KM were satisfied. Recently the number of hospitals and medical staff for HPC has been increasing but not enough compared with the number of patients who need HPC. Additionally the number of patients using KM has grown and the classification of them varied but the National Health Insurance didn‘t cover it sufficiently.ConclusionThe result of this review suggested that KM was effective for some symptoms related to terminal cancer patients. Therefore it may be the appropriate treatment for palliative care. This is the reason why we should make effort for KM to be more developed for end-of-life patients.
Objectives: This study aimed to find out the characteristics of patients with facial palsy based on the National Health Insurance(NHI) statistical yearbook and provide the information pertaining to supplement Coverage of NHI.Methods: Based on the data of NHI between 2004 to 2021 for facial palsy(G51) obtained from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the analyses were carried out according to the distribution of gender and the number of patients, visits, reimbursed days, and medical expenses by using the SAS 9.4.Results: The crude rate of facial palsy was reported as 361.71(2021) comparable with 419.60(2004) and 534.11(2009). The rate of men increased from 293.96(2004) to 302.27(2021) but the rate of women decreased from 450.88(2014) to 420.80(2021). The number of patients maintained around 190,000, however, it declined for patients treated Korean medicine(KM) after 2010. As the medical expenses were elevated, especially Western medicine(WM), that of WM exceeded KM’s since 2018. The expenses of women were higher than men’s in KM. By contrast, there was no difference with gender in WM. For reimbursed days per visits, it has been increased in WM but there was no difference in KM.Conclusion: Although the rate of patients with facial palsy in KM was high with no difference in the whole number of patients and reimbursed days per visits in KM annually, the number of patients in KM decreased but medical expenses elevated. According to this, it is necessary for reinforcing Coverage of NHI to research other factors related to KM.
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