Wang Q, et al. – An analysis was set up to assess the efficacy of oral Chinese herbal medicine as maintenance treatment after chemotherapy for advanced non–small–cell lung cancer. With the help of the data obtained, researchers highlighted oral Chinese herbal medicine as an efficient and safe maintenance therapy strategy, for patients who show non–progression—including stable disease, partial response, or complete response—after first–line chemotherapy, including those with a poor quality of life.

Methods

• The Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, PubMed, embase, and the Cochrane Library databases were searched for all eligible studies.
• Overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), the 1-year and 2-year survival rates, and performance status were the endpoints.
• A fixed-effects model and a random-effects model were employed for heterogeneity in the Stata software application (version 11.0: StataCorp LP, College Station, TX, U.S.A.), with the results expressed as hazard ratios (hrs) or risk ratios (RRS), with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95% cis).

Results

• Inclusion criteria was satisfied by sixteen randomized studies representing 1150 patients.
• This study reported an association of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as maintenance treatment with a significant increase in OS, PFS, and 2-year survival rate, and a significant improvement in performance status, compared with best supportive care, observation, or placebo.