What is it about?
Clinical evidence synthesized in this overview of systematic review (SR) suggested that the use of Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) with chemotherapy can significantly improve quality of life (QoL) among NSCLC patients. Among all the 11 reviewed CHM treatments, Hai-shen-su has the highest probability of being the best add-on treatment for improving QoL, as illustrated by the Network Meta-analysis (NMA) results.
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Why is it important?
While existing SRs have indicated the add-on benefits of individual CHM in improving QoL among NSCLC patients undergoing chemotherapy, none of them have investigated the comparative effectiveness of different CHM using NMA methods. In the present overview, the majority of included RCTs (82%) recruited patients at TNM III–IV stages. With most NSCLC patients being diagnosed at this advanced stage of disease, improving QoL, and managing symptoms may be more important than curing the cancer itself.38 Hence, evidence from this overview is likely to have high relevance to many newly diagnosed NSCLC patients.
Perspectives
Anecdotal evidence has suggested that the alleviation of chemotherapy-related adverse effects by CHM is mediated via a reduction of chemotherapy concentration in the body. This raises concerns on whether improved QoL may come with a price of reduced survival. RCTs reporting both QoL and survival outcomes can resolve this uncertainty, and results from 5 trials have suggested no trade-off between QoL improvement and survival. This provides preliminary evidence on how CHM may act synergistically with chemotherapeutic drugs without comprising the latter's effect
Dr. Vincent CH Chung
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Chinese Herbal Medicine for Improving Quality of Life Among Nonsmall Cell Lung Cancer Patients, Medicine, January 2016, Wolters Kluwer Health,
DOI: 10.1097/md.0000000000002410.
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