RESUMEN
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) emphasizes treatment based on syndrome differentiation, which em-bodies the concept of individualized diagnosis and dynamic treatment on a holistic view. RCT was frequently used in TCM clinical study. However, it cannot reflect the concept of treatment based on syndrome differentiation. The use of adaptive treatment strategies (ATS) in clinical research can adjust therapy in patients according to the change of disease, so it can reflect personalized medicine and dynamic treatment. From this perspective, the process of treat-ment based on syndrome differentiation was a process of adaptive treatment decision. So the method for developing ATS can effectively evaluate the efficacy of different treatment strategies in TCM clinical study. ATS had been used in some clinical studies from published literatures abroad. However, the use of ATS in domestic clinical research was seldom been reported. This paper gave an outline of the concept of ATS. In addition, this paper focused on three methods which can take the delayed effects of current treatment action into consideration and can compare the over-all effect of different ATS. It was hoped to lay foundation for future scientific research of TCM in the implementation of SMART and provide a new idea.