Traditional Chinese Medicine

OBJECTIVE: To compare the effects of integrated Chinese-Western therapy versus Western therapy alone on the survival rate of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at middle-late stage and to evaluate prognostic factors.

METHODS: We selected 98 inpatients with middle-late stage NSCLC diagnosed from March 2009 to March 2011 and randomly divided them into two groups, with 49 cases in each group, and the clinical data were analyzed retrospectively. The control group was treated by the combined methods of Western Medicine, including chemotherapy, supportive treatment and symptomatic treatment. The observation group was treated by injection and prescriptions of Chinese medicine based on Traditional Chinese Medicine syndrome differentiation and by the same combined methods of western treatment used in the control group. After treatment, the survival rates of the patients were compared by the stage of cancer and evaluation of 24 prognostic factors analyzed by a Cox regression model, and the clinical data were statistically analyzed.

RESULTS: The survival rates of all patients were over 90.0% at 1 and 3 months after treatment with no significant differences between the two groups (P>0.05); In the observation group the survival rates at 6 months and 1 year were 93.4% and 42.8%, respectively, being superior to 85.6% and 18.3% in the control group (P<0.05). The median survival time in the observation group was superior to the control group (P<0.05); The effects of 24 prognostic factors were significantly better in the observation group than in the control group (P<0.05).

CONCLUSION: Integrated Chinese-western therapy can significantly improve the survival rate in patients with middle-late stage NSCLC and improve prognostic factors compared with western therapy alone.