My Experience Treating Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia with Two Small TCM Formulas

Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) refers to pneumonia that develops 48 hours after admission in patients who were neither admitted with pneumonia nor in the incubation period of a pneumonic infection, caused by pathogens acquired within the hospital. Surveys indicate that the mortality rate of HAP in China is about 22.3%.

On two occasions I helped patients from the same family resolve HAP. The first patient was a leukemia sufferer over seventy years old. During his hospital stay he suddenly developed a persistent high fever; the doctors diagnosed pneumonia as the cause and treated him with antibiotics and hormones, but the response was poor.

The family consulted me. I suggested they buy some Gouteng (Uncaria Ramulus cum Uncis) and Bohe (Menthae Folium) from a pharmacy: brew 3–5 pieces of Gouteng with 0.5 g of Bohe as a tea using boiling water, let it cool, and drink it in place of water, refreshing it once the flavor fades. After only one day, the patient's fever came rapidly under control. He continued the tea for another day or two, then stopped; the high fever never returned.

The second patient was the son-in-law of the first, who was admitted during the Spring Festival with a sudden cerebral infarction. After more than ten days in hospital he suddenly developed a persistent high fever; examination again showed pneumonia. Antibiotics were given with no effect after several days, and the family asked me to help again. This time I advised oral Lianhua Qingwen capsules together with the same Gouteng-Bohe tea. After one day his body temperature had basically returned to normal; after two more days of treatment the fever subsided and he was well enough to be discharged.

This family is well known to me, which is why I dared to give such an unconventional-sounding recommendation. That these small formulas could cure HAP is indeed astonishing. The Gouteng-Bohe tea was a folk remedy for persistent cough discovered by chance by Zhu Chenyu, former head of the TCM department at Peking Union Medical College Hospital; it is recorded in Zhu Chenyu's Clinical Experience Collected Works. I had previously used this small formula for several cases of cough and pediatric asthma with remarkable results. One child with asthma that had resisted treatment everywhere recovered in less than a week, which left a deep impression on me.

Thinking the matter over carefully, I believe this formula can treat certain respiratory tract infections, which is why I dared to recommend it for these two HAP patients — and the results were gratifying.

I am now studying Western medicine full-time, yet when it comes to treating illness I still prefer Chinese herbal medicine. Partly because I am used to it and highly skilled with it; partly because many TCM therapies work faster than Western drugs and offer better value. Western medicine is more scientific when explaining the causes of disease, but current Western pharmacotherapy still has many shortcomings, and TCM can sometimes fill the gap.