The Evaluation of Effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medical Interventions for the Cancer patients undergoing Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy

• Main Author: 陳嘉允
• Other Authors: 鄭宗琳
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/53003449360360484343

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 統計資訊研究所 === 104 === Purpose: Cancer emerges as one of the major health issues in the world. Some popular treatments for patients with cancer, e.g. surgery, chemotherapy (CT) and radiotherapy (RT), often cause severe side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, general weakness and so on, which may decrease patient’s quality of life (QOL). On relieving the side effects caused by the usual treatments, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is among the most commonly used complementary therapies for cancer patients. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of TCM in improving the QOL of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Experimental design: We recruited thirty nine patients from the outpatients of Chinese Medicine Department in ChangHua Christian Hospital. Among these patients, twenty-four patients were arranged in the intervention group and the other fifteen patients were arranged in control group. We use Bu-Zhong-Yi-Qi-Tang in intervention group as complementary treatment and starch as placebo in control group. We use paired-T test to conduct intra-group statistically analysis for EORTC Quality of Life Questionnaire C30, and conduct Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon testing as inter-groups analysis. Results: 1. Intra-Group analysis. For the treatment group, apropos of the functional index, comparing the total scales of EORTC-C30 pretreatment and post treatment, there is a significant improvement in the social function, the cognitive function, and the general health condition. Concerning the index of symptoms, there is a significant improvement on fatigue, pain and constipation. For the control group, the pre-and-post treatment analysis shows that, the emotional function (functional index), and the pain and diarrhea symptoms (index of symptoms) have significant improvements. 2. Inter-groups Analysis. Before intervention, we see that the cognitional function of the treatment group is significantly worse, while there is no significant difference between these two groups after TCM intervention. We also find that the emotional function of the control group has a more significant improvement than that of the treatment group.