Exploring the characteristics of inquiry and the correlation with TCM syndromes about the patients with cardiovascular disease

Objective: Inquiry occupies an important position in the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diagnostic methods. Observing the characteristics of inquiry symptoms and the correlation with TCM syndromes can determine the important guiding significance to build recognition model and diagnostic criteria of syndrome. Methods: In this study, we collected 3707 valid cases, analyzed the inquiry symptoms of patients with cardiovascular disease, then to explore the distribution of inquiry information and the correlation with TCM syndromes based on the methods, such as frequency analysis, expert score, and correlation analysis. Results: We found the symptoms of frequency analysis and expert symptom score all in the top 50, add up to 41. According to the results by correlation analysis, the correlation coefficient between each symptom and each syndrome are sorted from high to low, the same with the experts score to each inquiry symptom basing on its importance of in diagnosing each syndrome. Conclusion: Inquiry occupies an important effect in differentiation syndrome. This research could provide certain objective basis for establishment of TCM syndromes diagnostic criteria of cardiovascular disease, thus provide some ideas and methods for the research of establishing TCM syndrome identification model, then to provide a reference for the syndrome standardization and objectification.