Abstract:

Objective To assess the treatment efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal decoction combined with western medicine on COVID⁃19 patients. Methods We searched related studies in PubMed，Cochran library， Web of science，MEDLINE，Embase，CNKI，VIP，CBM，Wanfang Data，etc. and manual retrieval of relevant reference was conducted as a supplement. All eligible studies published from December 2019 to September 2020 were included and data were screened and extracted independently by two researchers. Review Manager 5.4 soft⁃ ware was used for meta ⁃analysis. Results Meta ⁃analysis showed that compared with the control group（western medicine group），experimental group（Chinese herbal decoction combined with western medicine）witnessed short⁃ ened hospital stay，and alleviation of cough and fatigue. There was no significant difference in terms of recovery rate，clinical effective rate，adverse drug events，death rate，CT improvement rate and alleviation of fever and polypnea between the two groups. Conclusion Chinese herbal decoction combined with western medicine has no significant advantages in terms of recovery rate ，clinical effective rate ，adverse drug events ，death rate，CT improvement rate，and alleviation of fever and polypnea，but has certain advantages in shortening hospital stay， and relieving cough and fatigue. However，due to small sample size and uneven quality of the literature，random clinical trials with high⁃quality large samples are still needed for further verification.

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