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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Jun 16, 2025; 13(17): 103920
Published online Jun 16, 2025. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v13.i17.103920
Published online Jun 16, 2025. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v13.i17.103920
Evaluation of clinical application of Korean medicine standard clinical pathway in a public hospital
Seung-Jae Shin, Department of Korean Medicine, The Graduate School, Dongguk University, Gyeonggi-do 10326, South Korea
Jin-Won Kim, Department of Internal Medicine of Korean Medicine, National Medical Center, Seoul 04564, South Korea
Ji-Cheon Jeong, Department of Internal Medicine, College of Korean Medicine, Dongguk University, Gyeonggi-do 10326, South Korea
Author contributions: Shin SJ and Kim JW contributed to the analysis; Jeong JC supervised the study; Shin SJ, Kim JW, and Jeong JC designed and conducted the study and wrote the paper; all of the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript to be published.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the National Medical Center Institutional Review Board (approval No. NRC-2023-10-109).
Informed consent statement: This study was a retrospective chart review, and informed consent was not required.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: Dataset is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ji-Cheon Jeong, PhD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, College of Korean Medicine, Dongguk University, 27 Dongguk-ro, Ilsandong-gu, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do 10326, South Korea. 26spirit@daum.net
Received: December 5, 2024
Revised: January 4, 2025
Accepted: January 18, 2025
Published online: June 16, 2025
Processing time: 76 Days and 0.2 Hours
Revised: January 4, 2025
Accepted: January 18, 2025
Published online: June 16, 2025
Processing time: 76 Days and 0.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Clinical pathways (CPs) are standardized guidelines for medical interventions targeting specific diseases. This study evaluated the clinical applicability and effectiveness of Korean medicine CPs for neck and shoulder pain in South Korean public healthcare institution. Significant improvements were observed in the numerical rating scale and neck disability index for neck pain and in the University of California-Los Angeles shoulder rating scale for shoulder pain after CP implementation. Economic outcomes also showed notable improvements for shoulder pain. These results confirm the clinical applicability and effectiveness of Korean medicine CPs for treating neck and shoulder pain.