To assess the current situation of rational use of proprietary Chinese medicines in emergency department.

Subject search was carried out by using "rational drug use" OR "prescription analysis" OR "prescription review" AND "Chinese patent medicine" OR "traditional Chinese medicine injection" OR "injection" AND "emergency" in CNKI database, and all literatures from the establishment of the database to August 1, 2022 were sorted by literature source, publication year, author and institution. The literature was classified by region, age distribution of the study population, and irrational drug use, and bibliometrics was used to evaluate the rational use of proprietary Chinese medicines in emergency department.

A total of 121 literature published in 65 journals were included. The research on the rational use of proprietary Chinese medicines in emergency department was on the rise, and researchers in East China were relatively more concerned about the rational use of proprietary Chinese medicines in emergency department. The total number of prescriptions in the included literature was 1 160 273, including 15 815 irrational prescriptions. Among them, non-conformant prescriptions, inappropriate prescriptions and extraordinary prescriptions accounted for 21.16%, 57.53% and 10.79%, respectively. The total number of emergency prescriptions of proprietary Chinese medicines for children (or infants) was 32 179, and the number of unreasonable prescriptions was 2 211. Among them, non-conformant prescriptions, inappropriate prescriptions and extraordinary prescriptions accounted for 16.46%, 30.48% and 50.57%, respectively. The irrational drug use in children mainly involved heat-clearing and expectorant Chinese patent medicines, and the irrational drug use was mainly off-label. The elderly in the emergency department mainly used proprietary Chinese medicines for promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis, and the irrational drug use mainly involved repeated administration and inappropriate combination medication. The adverse reactions of proprietary Chinese medicines mainly involved skin tissue and digestive system symptoms, and related irrational drug use conditions included unsuitable combination medication, repeated medication, and unsuitable injection vehicles (or unsuitable route of administration or dosage form).

The number of studies on the rational use of proprietary Chinese medicines in the emergency department is limited and the quality is not high. In the future, it is urgent to formulate guidelines for the clinical use of proprietary Chinese medicines that are more suitable for emergency department, optimize the evaluation criteria, and lay the foundation for effectively promoting the rational and standardized application of proprietary Chinese medicines in the emergency department.