Objective: To investigate the prescription principles of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for pulmonary fibrosis

in order to provdie reference for clinical TCM treatment and research and development of new medicine for PF. Method: Literatures with titles of ‘pulmonary fibrosis’ and ‘treatment’

and the publishing time of ‘2005-2014’ were retrieved in the databases of CNKI

CBM and TCM

and analyzed with the methods of ‘frequency analysis’ and ‘cluster analysis’. Result: Totally 382 articles were retrieved

and 129 articles were selected

involving 182 prescriptions. The most frequently used traditional Chinese medicines for the treatment of PF were Astragali Radix and Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix. Among the herbs used for more than 26 times

Buqi herbs accounted for 52%

and Huoxue herbs accounted for 48%. The accumulative frequency of tonic herbs

Huatan herbs

Zhike herbs

Qingre herbs and Huoxue herbs reached 77.39%. As to the Pathogenesis

Qi deficiency and blood stasis took up the largest proportion of 40.58%. Conclusion: Pathogenesis of PF is the most closely related to deficiency

phlegm and blood stasis. Main treatment principles are supplementing Qi and nourishing Yin

nourishing the lungs and clearing the phlegm

promoting blood circulation to remove meridian obstruction

and nourishing the lungs and clearing the heat. Medicines for supplementing Qi

promoting blood circulation and clearing the heat have a higher use frequency.