A patient diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. After 3 months of complimentary treatment using herbal extract combined with one course of chemotherapy, in a subsequent visit, patient was re-classed as Stage 1 (in remission).
-How to evaluate treatment efficacy since both modern and traditional treatments were concurrently employed?
-Disregard the degree of contribution from either treatment (chemo & herbal), what would be a correct calculation of improvement of survival rate change from stage 4 to stage 1?
-What would be an appropriate sample size in clinical trial of this type?
Dear Paul
I am surprised you are interested in cancer diseases.
Your question is very interesting and difficult for me. However, I think the possibility that the first judgment with stage 4 was wrong.
I agree--after 40+ years of clinical studies in colorectal cancer, I have never known of Stage 4 going to Stage I. The definition of the Stages of colorectal cancer would not be possible. Maybe it wa a Stage 4 and is in remission but would not be a Stage I unless miss diagnosed in the start.
@Tommye .... in the field, stage 1 and remission are completely differemt. Is it correct if Stage 4 could go into remission? (although it is at that advanced stage). As for misdiagnoses---this is always a possibility and in fact "probable" where the professionals in some part of the world based their diagnosis on comptuer generated images if not verified by biopsy. In this case colonoscopy was used along with other blood sample analysis.
@Shuichi .... I have been doing herbalism research and experiments (extraction) on the side. Currently, I have been extracting plants for testing on some form of cancer and diabetes. Cancer proliferation odeling uses statistics----another reason for this interest :)
I am also working with Phytomedicine, Yes the herbal medicine plays a major role in cancer therapy.
Dear Paul
I analyzed 350,000 cancer patients with SSM and looked for the reason the high survival patients from cart information. However, I am not successful in an analysis.
You know I can be a success in cancer gene analysis. Probably, I am the success in cancer gene diagnosis. If you can collect gene data of patients, I can analyze and report you. See my new update "Draft ver2: From Cancer Gene Analysis to Cancer Gene Diagnosis."
Dear Suichi,
You have a wealth of information & data. Some of plants derived compounds (phytochemistry) had been known to be anti-mutagenic. Your expertise in genonmics would be very useful in East-West medical research. I shall contact you re gene data collection.
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