Abstract
Objective: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.Methodology: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. Results: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). Conclusion:Herbal therapy did improve the QoL of cancer patients in the southern region of Peninsular Malaysia.
Highlights
Cancer patients face significant physiological, psychological, and socioeconomic challenges (Jang et al, 2017)
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
Reducing symptom burden caused by cancer itself or cancerrelated treatment is high on the clinical research agenda (Tishelman et al, 2007; Akin et al, 2010) as such burden is negatively correlated to the quality of life (QoL) of cancer patients (Steele et al, 2005; Akin et al, 2010)
Summary
Cancer patients face significant physiological, psychological, and socioeconomic challenges (Jang et al, 2017). Many patients have symptoms of general weakness, thirst, fatigue, pain, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting during or after chemotherapy or radiotherapy (Darus, 2016) Emotional disturbances such as anxiety and depression are common during diagnosis and treatment (Jang et al, 2017). The government of Malaysia has acknowledged integrative treatment of Traditional and Complementary (T&CM) into the modern healthcare system This in line with the emphasis of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the importance of T&CM in overall health care management through the Regional Strategy for Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific (2011-2020) and the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy (2014-2023). In this study, we explored the effect of herbal therapy on the QoL of cancer patients in public T&CM clinics in Malaysia
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