What are the medical herbal therapy preparations?

Currently, most of the medical herbal therapy preparations approved for marketing in China are processed by extracting effective components from classic medicinal plants. They cover three major administration routes: oral, topical, and injection. They are now routinely used in many clinical departments.

I have been practicing in the community TCM department for almost 7 years. The most prescribed herbal preparations for patients on a daily basis are topical herbal preparations. There is basically no threshold for use and the acceptance rate is also high. For example, if a child suffers from itching and crying due to miliary rash, I usually prescribe calamine lotion with mint and honeysuckle extract added. Applying it two or three times can relieve the itching. ； When encountering a patient who sprained his foot or fell his leg, he prescribed compound gardenia ointment for external application, which reduced swelling and pain much faster than a simple cold compress. Last month, a sophomore in high school sprained his ankle while playing basketball, and it was so swollen that he could not wear shoes. After applying it for three days, he was able to walk normally. There are also Sophora flavescens gel commonly used in gynecology and Compound Cortex Phellodendron liquid lubricant used in anorectal medicine. They all work directly locally and rarely cause systemic adverse reactions.

If I encounter patients with wind-heat, cold, or upper respiratory tract infection, I will also prescribe oral herbal preparations according to their physical constitution, such as Pudilan Anti-inflammatory Oral Liquid and Lianhua Qingwen Granules, which everyone is familiar with. I also prescribe silibinin capsules for patients with fatty liver and liver damage. The active ingredients are extracted from herbs. The dosage is much more accurate than brewing herbal medicine at home, and it is also easier to carry. However, every time I prescribe medicine, I repeatedly tell the patient not to think that herbal preparations have no side effects. A while ago, a parent gave Pudilan to a child with a weak spleen and stomach for three days without asking the doctor. The child had diarrhea for two days before he came to treat it. This is a typical misuse of medicine. No matter what medicine, it must be used according to the doctor's advice to be safe.

There is also a type of herbal preparations for intravenous use, which have been quite controversial in recent years. For example, Xiyanping and Shuanghuanglian injections, which were commonly used to fight viruses and reduce fever in the past, are effective much faster than oral drugs. They were used a lot in pediatrics and respiratory departments in the early years. However, with the increase in reports of anaphylactic shock and serious adverse reactions, our grassroots hospitals have already strictly restricted the use of such preparations. Only higher-level hospitals can use them on demand for patients without relevant allergies if they have emergency conditions. There are now many views in the academic community that the purity of the active ingredients and the adverse reaction monitoring mechanism of this type of intravenous preparations need to be improved, and they must undergo more sufficient clinical verification on large samples before they can be used more securely on a large scale.

It’s interesting to say that many people’s impression of herbal preparations is still the black soup boiled in earthen pots. In fact, the current medical herbal preparations are more like picking out the “effective elites” in herbal medicines, removing useless impurities, and making dosage forms suitable for different scenarios, making them more convenient and controllable to use. Of course, this track is still developing, and research on many varieties is still following up. There is no need to blindly pursue it or deliberately reject it. There will be no problem if you use it according to the doctor's instructions.