Research situation of traditional Chinese medicine on the quality of life in patients with cancers

By bibliographical research, we analyzed and compared the on broad and abroad research reports to learn the present situation of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in evaluating the quality of life (QOL) in patients with cancers. The results show that the method of QOL evaluation is widely applied in science of oncology. Especially, QOL is eager for TCM study in oncology, so that new quantitative QOL tables have been established to reveal relationship between QOL and TCM theory as well as therapeutic effects of TCM in patients with cancers. Recently, lots of quantitative QOL tables have been presented, but there are limits in applying them because of differences of view-points and culture backgrounds between western and eastern worlds, and differences between theories of TCM and western medicine. Therefore, we think that the future work about QOL research in TCM should focus on two aspects: 1) characterized quantitative QOL tables of TCM in oncology, 2) through scientific research methods, to testify how TCM upgrade the QOL in patients with cancers.