ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Korea has a parallel system of western and oriental medicine. Therefore doctors of each department have distrust of the other, which in turn confuses the patients and cause discontentment with medical standards. To upgrade the satisfaction of patients that want oriental therapy, we have studied the western-oriental cooperative therapy system to identify its flaw, if any, and tried to find a standard of therapy. METHODS: The 105 Patients included in this study were diagnosed as having a cerebral infarction and were admitted to the neurology department or the oriental medicine department via the emergency department from January to July 2002. We retrospectively analyzed sex, age, severity, admission periods, therapeutic methods and result, and frequency of consulting other departments. RESULTS: At times of admission, the scale of severity showed that there were more severe patients in the western-therapy group. There was no difference in the total prognosis between two groups. In mild patients (GCS>12), western therapeutic results were more favorable than those of the oriental group. In the western-therapy group, 32 (55.2%) patients also received oriental treatment, and 38 (80.9%) patients in the oriental-therapy group received combination of western and oriental therapy. CONCLUSION: From the above study, we propose that patients with unstable vital signs or with acute cerebral infarction should be treated with weatern therapy primarily, with oriental therapy after stabilization, and that mild or longstanding cerebral infarction patients can be admitted to whichever department they want.