The Scientific Basis of Chinese Medicine and Cancer Care: A Western Medicine Perspective

摘要

Recent evidence suggests that many traditional Chinese medical therapies can be effective for the supportive care of cancer patients. This is a review of the published literature (indexed in Medline) and our own practical experience. It provides various levels of evidence that support further research into a developing model of integrative care. Most published studies are at evidence level III, in other words trials without randomization, single group pre-post, cohort, time series, or matched case-controlled studies. Levels I and H evidence from well designed randomized controlled trials of appropriate size is emphasized in the text of this review. In view of thief paucity of quality data from levels and II evidence, meta-analysis of the; data is usually not possible. Well-designed randomized controlled trials are encouraged in view of the promising initial observations. It is important not to discount TCM as a system simply because an individual study is negative. The same applies to Western biomedical medicine. A negative drug study does not negate the whole of biomedicine. The challenge for TCM is to develop repeatable and provable outcomes, standardization, and quality assurance. The scientific bases of herbs and acupuncture are rapidly beingestablished, but well designed, pragmatic, controlled clinical studies are lacking in most domains.