A Review of Dysmenorrhea Related Articles in Literature of Oriental Medicine

한의학 관련 학회지의 월경통 관련 논문에 대한 종설

Purpose: Dysmenorrhea is a common gynecologic condition among reproductive-age women. It consisted with menstrual clamps and other symptoms such as nausea. vomiting, diarrhea, and fatigue. Pain control for this disease mainly through NASIDs. but recently CAM therapies, acupuncture and others for painful menstruation are widely used in western countries. But RCT articles about dysmenorrhea in Korea, are not enough to lead such global research trends. The purpose of this study is to review treatment method and other research tendency about dysmenorrhea in Korean Medicine(KM) related dominant journals. Methods: Searching was done through web site and directly searched dysmenorrhea related articles in journals of Korean medicine Gynecology, published during 1996-2007. Results: Twenty five articles were searched in KM related journals, then two of them were simple case report and ten were paper of clinical trials. But there no RCT or control group-designed study. All of them present positive effect on dysmenorrhea but drop out rates were relatively high. Conclusion: KM therapies including acupuncture and herbal medicine have some beneficial effect to resolve menstrual cramps, but KM therapy related Korean articles don't have strong objective power as a evidence in the viewpoint of EBM. So continuous clinical trials such as RCT and multi center trials are needed.