Effect of Chinese Herbal Medicine Therapy on Overall and Cancer Related Mortality in Patients With Advanced Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma in Taiwan.

ABSTRACT: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a head and neck cancer involving epithelial squamous-cell carcinoma of the nasopharynx that mainly occurs in individuals from East and Southeast Asia. We investigated whether Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) as a complementary therapy offers benefits to these patients. We retrospectively evaluated the Taiwan Cancer Registry (Long Form) database for patients with advanced NPC, using or not using CHM, between 2007-2013. Cox proportional-hazard model and Kaplan‒Meier survival analyses were applied for patient survival. CHM-users showed a lower overall and cancer-related mortality risk than non-users. For advanced NPC patients, the overall mortality risk was 0.799-fold for CHM-users, after controlling for age, gender, and Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) score (C

SUBMITTER: Wang CY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7941275 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature