Integrated Chinese-Western therapy versus Western therapy alone on survival rate in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer at middle-late stage

In this trial 98 patients with middle-late stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were randomly allocated to an experimental group, who received standard Western treatment plus Chinese medicine prescribed according to pattern differentiation, and a control group, who received standard Western treatment alone. The authors provide extensive details of the Chinese herbal medicine used, which included both intravenous injection and herbal decoction, and describe how the prescriptions were modified according to individual symptoms. The results showed that there was no difference between the two groups at one and three months, but at six months and one year the survival rates of the experimental group was significantly better than the control group. [Aug 2013]