Centre for Evidence-Based Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100029, China.
Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2012;2012:751046. doi: 10.1155/2012/751046. Epub 2012 May 31.
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely used in cancer in China. Case series report a series of cases exposed to a certain intervention. To understand the current situation of case series of TCM for cancer, we performed this review. We included case series of cancer patients treated with TCM therapy. Electronic searches were conducted in four main Chinese databases until February 2011. A total of 1,217 reports of case series (92,945 patients) were included. The top five types of cancer were lung cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, leukemia, and esophageal cancer. Leukopenia and hiccup treated by TCM were the most common adverse reactions after surgery or induced by chemo/radiotherapy. More than half of the patients were treated with TCM therapies alone. The application of herbal medicines especially formula based on syndrome differentiation was highly prevalent, and the typical administration route was oral usage. 1,182 reports were published in a structured format. The quantity of TCM case series for cancer treatment is substantial. Further studies should focus on the most common types of cancer and the most frequently applied TCM therapies. We presented a recommendation from the methodological point of view for the format of reporting.
中医（TCM）在中国已广泛应用于癌症治疗。病例系列报告了一系列接受某种干预措施的病例。为了了解中医治疗癌症的病例系列现状，我们进行了本次综述。我们纳入了接受中医治疗的癌症患者的病例系列研究。截至 2011 年 2 月，我们在四个主要的中文数据库中进行了电子检索。共纳入了 1217 篇病例系列报告（92945 例患者）。最常见的五种癌症类型为肺癌、肝癌、胃癌、白血病和食管癌。中医治疗后的白细胞减少和呃逆是手术后或化疗/放疗引起的最常见不良反应。超过一半的患者单独接受中医治疗。草药的应用，尤其是基于辨证论治的方剂，非常普遍，典型的给药途径是口服。有 1182 篇报告采用了结构化格式。用于癌症治疗的中医病例系列数量庞大。进一步的研究应集中在最常见的癌症类型和最常应用的中医治疗方法上。我们从方法学的角度提出了报告格式的建议。
