Treatment based on syndrome differentiation, as a core of diagnostic and treatment methods in traditional Chinese medicine, now appears to be limited by some of its shortages during the high-speed development of medicine, such as no symptoms for differentiation in some patients, lack of objective standardization and pertinence, and limitations of the four diagnostic methods, etc. Combination of syndrome differentiation and disease differentiation can not only make up the shortages of syndrome differentiation but also expand the scope of diseases treated with traditional Chinese medicine and promote the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine. The author discusses the limitations of treatment based on syndrome differentiation as well as the advantages of combining syndrome differentiation with disease differentiation. It is also stated that this combination can make the system of syndrome differentiation perfect.

Key words: Therapeutics, TCM, Syndrome differentiation, Disease differentiation, Integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine