A Comparative Study on the Improvementof Quality of Life and Medication PatternAfter Adjuvant Chemotherapy for ChineseMedicine: A Prospective Cohort Study ofBreast Cancer Patients
1Department of Chinese Medicine, Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation,
Chia-Yi, Taiwan
2Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, College of Medicine, National Chen
Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan
3Department of Chinese Medicine, Chi Mei Medical Center, Tainan, Taiwan
4Institute of Gerontology, National Chen Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan
【Summary】
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the world. In every 47 minutes, there was one woman who were newly diagnosed of breast cancer in Taiwan, with an average age of about 54 year-old. The incidence of breast cancer in women in our country is not as high as that in western women, but perhaps due to the effects of westernized diet, late marriage and late pregnancy,the incidence of breast cancer is not only younger but also increasing year by year.
With the recent cancer registration report statistics and the Chinese top ten cause of death report, the incidence of breast cancer and the death rate all reach the first step. The conventional treatment of breast cancer were chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. However, whether in the symptoms of breast cancer, or side effects caused by surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, patient’s discomfort symptoms impacted their life quality. This study aimed at treating patients with breast cancer hospitalized by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). With TCM intervention and questionnaire survey, we collected and observed 27 newly recruited patients who have not received any TCM treatment of breast cancer. The FACT- G quality of life table were used to patients before and after the intervention of Chinese medicine intervention. From the results of the study, we found that the quality of Life Scale were improved after interventional treatment of Chinese medicine patients, and with statistically significant differences in functional, physiological and emotional items (P<0.05), the results show that Chinese medicine can really help patients with breast cancer in the quality of life. We also revealed the medicine pattern in these patients and compared with the NHIRD study in 2013.
Keywords: Breast cancer, Life quality, Chinese medicine, Medicine pattern,