Cancer pain control with traditional Chinese medicine

Abstract

Cancer pain is the most common and one of the most distressing and feared symptoms among cancer patients. This chapter focuses on summarizing and evaluating the current clinical evidence on using different modalities of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to control cancer pain. Traditional Chinese medicine includes multiple modalities such as herbal medicine, acupuncture, dietary therapy, massage, and qigong therapy. Clinical trials of acupuncture for cancer pain suggest that acupuncture might be efficacious in reducing cancer related pain, particularly short term and in the post-operative setting. Similarly, massage is a promising therapy for control of cancer related pain, particularly short term benefit. While few Chinese herbal regimens appear promising as therapies for cancer related pain, based on the current scientific evidence, it cannot be recommended for routine clinical practice yet. The idea of qigong reducing cancer pain is quite stimulating as this is an intervention with minimal risk but research in this area is quite limited. Overall, TCM has the potential to provide effective complementary therapy to decrease cancer pain. However, the current research for TCM modalities in treating cancer pain are limited by methodological weaknesses such as small sample size, lack of standard outcome measurement, and lack of effective randomization and blinding method. Further studies on TCM for cancer pain with rigorous study design are warranted. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010.