Survival Analysis of Cancer Patients Treated with Traditional Korean Medicine Recent 10 years

Abstract

Purpose: We aimed to analyze survival rates and duration of cancer patients who treated with Traditional Korean Medicine (TKM). Methods: We analyzed the medical records of 971 patients whowere treatedmore than 1month of out-patient or 20 days of hospitalization at the Daejeon Oriental Hospital from Oct. 2004 to Sep. 2014. The survival rates andmedian survival duration (MSD) were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and Log-rank test. Seven different kinds of cancers patients who were suffered from liver, thyroid, colon & rectum, stomach, breast, pancreas, or lung cancer were analyzed by gender, age, and cancer stage-specific. We also estimated survival rates and MSD of 203 terminally ill cancer patients. Results: The 5-year survival rates and MSD of 971 patients was 38.6% (95%CI 34.8 – 42.3), 3.28-year (95%CI 2.87 3.65) respectively. The 5-year survival rates of liver, colon & rectum, stomach, breast, pancreas and lung cancer patients were 30.0% (95% CI 19.5 – 40.5), 25.0%(95% CI 16.0 – 34.0), 24.4%(95% CI 16.2 – 32.6), 79.3%(95% CI 70.4 – 88.1), 3.4% (95% CI 0.0 – 9.3), 22.2%(95% CI 12.6 – 31.8), respectively. The MSD for liver, colon & rectum, stomach, breast, pancreas and lung cancer patients was 2.27-year (95%CI 1.21 3.50), 3.11-years (95%CI 2.67 3.58), 1.96-year (95%CI 1.71 2.52), 8.04-year (95%CI 7.01 10.69), 1.01-year (95% CI 0.80 1.21), 2.07-years (95%CI 1.47 2.53), respectively. Moreover, the MSD of terminally ill cancer patients was 0.39-years (about 20weeks, 95%CI 0.33 0.44) and 0.5-year survival rates for themwere 40.7% (95%CI 33.6 47.7), respectively. Conclusion: All cancer types were not obviously extended the survival duration by treatment with TKM, the survival rate, especially for the liver, breast, pancreas and lung cancer patients are relatively higher than other treatment. Well-designed and prospective clinical trials should be recommended to provide more reliable evidence. Contact: Jun-young Kim, jy-057@hanmail.net