Abstract

Objectives : The study of Traditional Korean medical therapy has recently become a popular academic field as proven to be an great alternative to the limitation of Western medical treatment. However, there has been little study examining the Quality of life to investigate the Effectiveness of Recent Traditional Korean Medical Therapy on Treating Allergic Rhinitis. Thus, this study aims to reveal the characteristics of Allergic Rhinitis patients, their clinical symptoms, and other accompanying diseases. Moreover, it attempts to investigate the sense of improvement and satisfaction from the Allergic Rhinitis patients treated with Traditional Korean Medical therapy by examining Quality of Life Questionnaires. Subject and Method : A total of 380 subjects that consists of allergic rhinitis patients and non patients were participated in this study. 330 allergic rhinitis patients were divided into two groups; the experimental group (230 subjects) was treated with Traditional Korean Medical therapy, and the control group (100 subjects) was not treated with any other therapy. Also, the normal control group (50 subjects) who had no symptoms of the allergic rhinitis was participated in this study as well. All the subjects were asked to answer to the questionaries that consist of two parts such as recalling the symptoms that they had 3 month ago, and describing the current symptoms that they had the present. The experimental group also was asked to answer the quality of life questionnaire before and after the therapy. Results: The results of investigating recent Traditional Korean therapy are as follows: 1. The reservoir rate of other disease was 39.0% in the control group and 34.8% in the experimental group. These were higher than the rate of the normal control (10.0%), which reveals the clinical characteristics of allergic rhinitis patients. 2. The symptoms of Allergic Rhinitis showed improvement after Traditional Korean medical therapy, which can be shown by its statistical significance. (p=.000<.001). 3. 97.0% of the Allergic Rhinitis patients treated with the Korean Therapy answered the improvement of symptom within 4 weeks, and 88.3% of the patients were satisfied with the Traditional Korean medical therapy. 4. The Nasal symptoms had prominently positive effect at the most as the symptoms significantly affect sleep disturbances, ocular symptoms, activity limitation, and emotional problems.

Keywords

• Allergic Rhinitis;
• Traditional Korean medical therapy;
• Quality of Life Questionnaires