ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate systematically whether or not the treatment of herbs invigorating spleen and removing dampness,blood stasis and toxin with chemotherapy is better than chemotherapy alone for advanced colorectal cancer.Methods The randomized controlled trails (RCT) involving combined treatment of herbs with chemotherapy,published from January 2000 to October 2015,were searched in CBM,CNKI,Wanfang Data,VIP,PubMed,Embase databases.Stata 14.0 software was used to analyze the data.Results 19 RCT containing 941 patients were included in this reta-analysis.Compared with chemotherapy alone,the combined treatment of Chinese herbal medicine and chemotherapy was obviously better in 1-year survival rate (RR =1.28,95 ％ CI 1.14-1.45),2-year survival rate (RR =1.52,95 ％ CI 1.05-2.18),3-year survival rate (RR =2.76,95 ％ CI 1.56-4.88),objective response (RR =1.11,95 ％ CI 1.04-1.19),Karnofsky score (RR =1.46,95 ％ CI 1.27-1.68) and traditional chinese medicine (TCM) symptom score (RR =1.58,95 ％ CI 1.33-1.75).The adverse effect rate was statistically reduced in the combined treatment group:leukopenia (RR =0.59,95 ％ CI 0.40-0.8),nausea and vomiting (RR =0.68,95 ％ CI 0.59-0.79),diarrhea (RR =0.67,95 ％ CI 0.53-0.85),neurotoxicity (RR =0.79,95 ％ CI 0.65-0.96).Conclusion Compared with chemotherapy alone,the treatment of herbs invigorating spleen and removing dampness,blood stasis and toxin combined with chemotherapy for advanced colorectal cancer can significantly increase survival rate and objective response rate,improve the quality of life,and meanwhile decrease the adverse effect rate.