Clinical Research Centre Hospital Sultan Ismail, Ministry of Health Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia.
Traditional and Complementary Unit, Hospital Sultan Ismail, Ministry of Health Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia.
Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2021 Jun 1;22(6):1857-1863. doi: 10.31557/APJCP.2021.22.6.1857.
To investigate the impact of herbal therapy on the quality of life (QoL) among cancer patients and to evaluate the relationship of QoL with age, gender, cancer stage, cancer type, and history of conventional treatment.
A prospective study was targeted on cancer patients receiving herbal therapy from a Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM) clinic in a public hospital from 1st January 2016 to 31st August 2018. The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTCQLQ-C30) was distributed to the patients prior to herbal therapy (baseline) and after the sixth and twelfth week of herbal therapy. Socio-demographic and clinical data were collected and analyzed using SPSS version 16.
The majority of the patients were females (60.0%) and were from the Chinese ethnic group (77.4%) with a mean age of 58.72 ± 12.17 years. Approximately 42.4% of patients were in advanced cancer stages at the time of study and 60.7% of patients had undergone radiotherapy before receiving herbal therapy. The most commonly prescribed herbs were Bai Hua She She Cao (90.6%) and Zhen Ren Huo Ming Yin (57.6%). Significant differences in mean score were observed in global health status, overall functional scales, and symptom scales after the sixth and twelfth week of receiving herbal therapy. QoL in terms of global health status and overall functional scales improved with higher scores while symptom scales recorded a lower score after twelve weeks of receiving herbal therapy in the T&CM clinic. Herbal therapy has a significant effect (p < 0.05) on the improvement of QoL of cancer patients. However, gender, cancer stage, cancer type, age, history of radiotherapy, and history of chemotherapy has no effect (p > 0.05).
Herbal therapy did improve the QoL of cancer patients in the southern region of Peninsular Malaysia.
研究草药疗法对癌症患者生活质量（QoL）的影响，并评估 QoL 与年龄、性别、癌症分期、癌症类型以及常规治疗史的关系。
本前瞻性研究以 2016 年 1 月 1 日至 2018 年 8 月 31 日期间在公立医院传统与补充医学（T&CM）诊所接受草药治疗的癌症患者为研究对象。在接受草药治疗前（基线）和治疗第 6 周和第 12 周后，向患者发放欧洲癌症研究与治疗组织生活质量问卷（EORTCQLQ-C30）。收集并使用 SPSS 版本 16 分析社会人口统计学和临床数据。
大多数患者为女性（60.0%），华裔（77.4%），平均年龄为 58.72 ± 12.17 岁。大约 42.4%的患者在研究时处于晚期癌症阶段，60.7%的患者在接受草药治疗前接受过放疗。最常开的草药是白花蛇舌草（90.6%）和珍珠母（57.6%）。接受草药治疗第 6 周和第 12 周后，全球健康状况、总体功能量表和症状量表的平均评分均有显著差异。接受 T&CM 诊所 12 周的草药治疗后，全球健康状况和总体功能量表的 QoL 有所改善，而症状量表的评分则较低。草药疗法对癌症患者的 QoL 有显著改善作用（p < 0.05）。然而，性别、癌症分期、癌症类型、年龄、放疗史和化疗史对 QoL 无显著影响（p > 0.05）。
草药疗法确实改善了马来西亚半岛南部地区癌症患者的 QoL。
