We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
Lung Cancer Survival With Herbal Medicine and Vitamins in a Whole-Systems Approach: Ten-Year Follow-up Data Analyzed With Marginal Structural Models and Propensity Score Methods.
- Authors
McCulloch, Michael; Broffman, Michael; van der Laan, Mark; Hubbard, Alan; Kushi, Lawrence; Kramer, Alan; Gao, Jin; Colford, John M.
- Abstract
Complementary and alternative medicines are used by up to 48% of lung cancer patients but have seen little formal assessment of survival efficacy. In this 10-year retrospective survival study, the authors investigated Pan-Asian medicine + vitamins (PAM+V) therapy in a consecutive case series of all non-small-cell lung cancer patients (n = 239) presenting at a San Francisco Bay Area Chinese medicine center (Pine Street Clinic). They compared short-term treatment lasting the duration of chemotherapy/radiotherapy with long-term therapy continuing beyond conventional therapy. They also compared PAM+V plus conventional therapy with conventional therapy alone, using concurrent controls from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California and California Cancer Registries. They adjusted for confounding with Kaplan-Meier, Cox regression, and newer methods – propensity score and marginal structural models (MSMs), which when analyzing data from observational studies or clinical practice records can provide results comparable with randomized trials. Long-term use of PAM+V beyond completion of chemotherapy reduced stage IIIB deaths by 83% and stage IV by 72% compared with short-term use only for the duration of chemotherapy. Long-term PAM+V combined with conventional therapy reduced stage IIIA deaths by 46%, stage IIIB by 62%, and stage IV by 69% compared with conventional therapy alone. Survival rates for stage IV patients treated with PAM+V were 82% at 1 year, 68% at 2 years, and 14% at 5 years. PAM+V combined with conventional therapy improved survival in stages IIIA, IIIB, and IV, compared with conventional therapy alone. Prospective trials using PAM+V with conventional therapy for lung cancer patients are justified.
- Subjects
CALIFORNIA; HERBAL medicine; VITAMIN therapy; ALTERNATIVE medicine -- Evaluation; MEDICINE; ANALYSIS of covariance; CANCER chemotherapy; COMBINED modality therapy; CONFIDENCE intervals; REPORTING of diseases; DRUG side effects; EXPERIMENTAL design; LONGITUDINAL method; LUNG cancer; CHINESE medicine; MULTIVARIATE analysis; SCIENTIFIC observation; HEALTH outcome assessment; RESEARCH funding; SURVIVAL analysis (Biometry); SAMPLE size (Statistics); TREATMENT effectiveness; PROPORTIONAL hazards models; RETROSPECTIVE studies; TREATMENT duration; STATISTICAL models; KAPLAN-Meier estimator; EVALUATION
- Publication
Integrative Cancer Therapies, 2011, Vol 10, Issue 3, p260
- ISSN
1534-7354
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/1534735411406439