3. Liver Diseases

3. Liver Diseases

Based on the fact that chronic hepatitis leads to compensatory hyperplasia of hepatic fibrous tissue, attempts have been made to treat chronic hepatitis using blood-stasis-removing therapies, with varying degrees of success. The First Infectious Disease Hospital in Beijing primarily used blood-stasis-removing therapy to treat eight cases of severe hepatitis, with a mortality rate of only 37.5%. Another eight patients of roughly the same severity were treated with conventional integrated Chinese–Western therapy as a control group, resulting in a mortality rate of 83.3%. This demonstrates that blood-stasis-removing therapy has unique advantages in treating severe hepatitis. The Shanghai Infectious Disease Hospital formulated the Tong Qu Yu Decoction, composed of peach kernel, safflower, magnolia bark, herba lycopodioides, rhubarb, sodium sulfate, and Sichuan magnolia bark, to treat jaundice-type infectious hepatitis, achieving satisfactory results. The rapid improvement of symptoms and swift recovery of liver function are difficult to match with ordinary hepatoprotective therapies. In addition, Shanghai has used Shixiao San, Xia Yu Xue Tang, and Ping Di Mu to treat protracted and chronic hepatitis, and employed dang gui, san ling, e zhu, and turtle shell decoction pills to treat splenomegaly and ascites due to cirrhosis caused by various reasons, totaling over 200 cases, all of which have also achieved good therapeutic results. The Zhongshan Hospital of the First Shanghai Medical College used the basic blood-stasis-removing formula (rhubarb, peach kernel, earth beetle, dang gui, red peony root, sodium sulfate, and salvia miltiorrhiza) to treat 18 cases of protracted and chronic hepatitis and 18 cases of early-stage cirrhosis, with symptom improvement observed in 70–80% of cases and liver shrinkage in one-third of cases.