A Case of Stage IV Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treated with Korean Medicine Therapy Alone
A 79-year-old Korean man was admitted to hospital due to cough and dyspnea. He was diagnosed with cancer of the right, upper lobe through a computed tomogram (CT) scanning on December 11, 2012. After 1 week, he was diagnosed as NSCLC squamous cell carcinoma through a biopsy at a university hospital. Another week later, he was finally diagnosed as having stage IV NSCLC due to multiple metastatic nodules in the upper and lower lobes of the left lung, the right supraclavicular lymph nodes and the body of pancreas through a PET-CT scan. Chemotherapy with cisplatin and gemcitabine was scheduled, but the patient refused it for a strong antagonistic feeling toward the expected side effects of chemotherapy and did not agree to any other therapy either. In his past medical history, he had been on medication for hypertension and diabetes for 10 years.\nThe patient was admitted to our hospital on February 22, 2013, with the chief complaint of cough and general weakness of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) scale 2. From February until September 2013, he has been on Korean medicine therapy (KMT) including pharmacopunctures and soramdan. The pharmacopunctures used were the wild ginseng pharmacopuncture (WGP), Cordyceps sinensis pharmacopuncture (CSP) and Trichosanthes kirilowii pharmacopuncture (TKP). Once a week, 10 ml of each pharmacopuncture fluid was administered intravenously, and a pill of soramdan was administered orally twice a week.\nThe ECOG scale was checked every week. At first, general weakness was severe and the patient could not carry out any work activities. On average, he was in bed for 3 h a day to rest and for 8 h to sleep, so the ECOG score was 2. The score of 2 was maintained for 4 weeks after the beginning of treatment. From the fifth week on, he was recovering strength and could carry out light housework, so the ECOG score decreased to 1.\nThe size of the tumor (length of the longest axis) was measured with CT scanning and was 48 mm on the day of the first diagnosis (December 11, 2012). It increased to 54 mm by February 12, 2013, since he refused chemotherapy. However, by April 12, 2013, two months after he started KMT, the size of the tumor decreased to 17 mm and continued to decrease within the following 2 months to 11 mm on June 13, 2013. On August 12, 2013, the size of the tumor was stable (fig. ).