What are the medical herbal therapy preparations?

At present, the domestic medical herbal therapy preparations approved by the national food regulatory department and marketed mainly cover external use, oral administration, and special oral administration. They are not as mysterious as the outside world reports. They are essentially compliant drugs that have been purified and the active ingredients have been quantified.

I have been working in primary surgery for almost seven years. I usually treat patients with small-area burns and red buttocks in infants and young children. The compound lithospermum oil that is often prescribed is the most typical topical herbal preparation. There is also the compound cork liquid lubricant used for sitz baths by patients who have undergone perianal surgery. The raw materials are traditional herbal medicines such as cork and forsythia. They have been industrially purified to remove impurities and allergenic ingredients. They are much safer than the herbal water brewed at home.

Oral preparations such as Isatis granules and Lianhua Qingwen granules, which are commonly prescribed by colleagues in the respiratory department, are also considered a major category of medical herbal preparations. However, there have been different opinions in the industry regarding the scope of application of such preparations: some scholars believe that symptomatic use can effectively shorten the course of upper respiratory tract infections. The side effects are also milder than many antipyretic and analgesic chemical drugs. Another person emphasized that many herbal oral preparations lack large-scale evidence-based medical data and are not recommended as routine preventive drugs for the general population. We will also strictly control this when prescribing clinically and will not prescribe them casually to patients without indications.

There are also medicines for specific parts of the body, such as the Ebu Shicao nasal drops commonly used by patients with chronic rhinitis, and the Baofukang suppository commonly used for gynecological inflammation, which are also compliant medical herbal preparations. Last month, a young man with chronic sinusitis came for a follow-up consultation and said that he had bought a homemade herbal rhinitis water from an Internet celebrity online. The more he used it, the worse his nasal congestion became. He switched to the regular Geseed Herbal Nasal Drops combined with saline nasal wash, and his symptoms improved a lot within two weeks. I also reminded him at the time not to fall for the "all natural, no additives" gimmick. Many homemade herbal preparations have never been sterilized or tested for pesticide residues. It is common to secretly add hormones and vasoconstrictors, which can lead to drug-induced rhinitis if used for a long time.

Oh, by the way, many people's misunderstandings about medical herbal preparations now come from non-compliant "copycat products". Really approved medical herbal preparations have clear national drug approval batch numbers on the packaging, and the active ingredients, adverse reactions, and contraindications are clearly written. They will not advertise "cure all diseases" or "zero side effects" at all. It is best to consult professional medical staff before using them, and don't buy them blindly.