Expert consensus on traditional Chinese medicine syndrome differentiation and development of quantitative tools for primary liver cancer

Accurate traditional Chinese medicine （TCM） syndrome differentiation is an important prerequisite for TCM treatment； however， there is currently still a lack of unified standards and operable clinical tools for the diagnosis of TCM syndromes in primary liver cancer， posing great challenges to the promotion of clinical regimens and the rational use of Chinese patent drugs. In order to unify and standardize the diagnostic criteria for TCM syndromes in primary liver cancer， the consensus working group organized relevant experts in the fields of TCM， integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine hepatology， and methodology to discuss and conduct expert consultation using the two-round Delphi method through a systematic review of the descriptions of TCM syndromes in existing guidelines， consensuses， and indications of Chinese patent medicines， with the mean， coefficient of variation， and full score rate as the criteria for item selection. This consensus establishes a syndrome diagnosis system covering 12 syndrome factors， 11 composite syndromes， and their corresponding diagnostic items and constructs a quantitative model for syndrome diagnosis based on item weights， and develops an online quantitative tool that can support dynamic entry of syndrome and symptom scores and achieve the visualization of trends before and after treatment. In addition， this consensus systematically describes the construction method and content of the above diagnostic system and provides a quantitative and visualized tool for syndrome diagnosis and efficacy evaluation， in order to provide a methodological reference and an operable platform for the standardized promotion of TCM syndrome differentiation and to improve the consistency of clinical syndrome differentiation and the rationality of the use of Chinese patent drugs.