Can Cancer Patients Stop Taking Medication After Recovery? When Should They Stop?

Should cancer patients take medication for life? People often ask me this question. To be honest, I cannot give a correct answer, or rather, there is simply no correct answer. In practice, some patients I have treated stopped taking medication and, during long-term follow-up, have remained well and live like normal people; another subset have relapsed after stopping.

Personally, I believe that after cancer treatment, once there is no solid tumor remaining and tumor markers have normalized, patients can stop medication and be monitored with regular checkups. If the cancer has a relatively high recurrence rate, they may continue medication for 1-3 years; if during this period there is no sign of recurrence and tumor markers do not rise, they can stop and be observed.

Several cancer patients I treated years ago stopped medication after imaging and tumor marker tests were all normal; they have now been observed for more than three years with no sign of recurrence.

One was a gastric cancer patient from Dandong. After diagnosis, the patient and family rejected Western medicine treatment—the patient's spouse had previously died of colorectal cancer only a few months after surgery and chemotherapy, leaving the family psychologically scarred. They requested purely Chinese medicine treatment. On March 5, 2019, the patient came to see me accompanied by her daughter. I treated her with purely Chinese medicine for nearly three years; her weight recovered, she returned to normal life, and follow-up checks showed no abnormalities. She has been followed to this day with no recurrence. I previously published this case as a medical record; see "Three-Year Medical Record of a Patient Yang with Poorly Differentiated Gastric Adenocarcinoma Treated with Pure Chinese Medicine."

Another was an ovarian cancer patient, Ms. Chen, from Jiuquan, Gansu. After developing ovarian cancer, she relapsed despite multiple treatments. She first consulted me on December 25, 2016. After a period of Chinese medicine treatment, the tumor shrank, but later fluctuated. I then recommended integrated Chinese-Western medicine; after several courses of chemotherapy the condition was not fully remitted, with multiple metastatic tumors still present. Continued Chinese medicine made the metastases disappear; once tumor markers normalized, medication was stopped. The entire course was about thirty months. She has occasionally taken the same Chinese herbs for short periods since, but no longer takes them long-term. During follow-up, every imaging and tumor-marker test has been normal. I published this case previously; see "Medical Record of Ovarian Cancer Recurrence and Metastasis Patient Chen Treated with Chinese Medicine."

There was also a cervical cancer patient, Ms. Ma. She first consulted me on May 10, 2019, for recurrent cervical cancer; by the time of consultation she was already in late-stage disease, with several major hemorrhages and rapid progression. After Chinese medicine treatment stabilized her condition, I suggested combining the herbs with radiotherapy. By 2021 the disease was controlled, the herbs were stopped, and follow-up has been uneventful. I published this case previously; see "Medical Record of Late-Stage Cervical Cancer Patient Ma."

In fact, some patients have been followed even longer. For example, a small-cell lung cancer patient from Qingdao and a poorly differentiated gastric adenocarcinoma patient from Ningbo have been off medication and under follow-up for close to or over ten years without recurrence. Unfortunately, these patients were treated early on and I did not keep their records carefully enough to write them up as medical cases.

Many cancer patients are overly anxious. After the lesion is eliminated and tumor markers normalize, they still feel uneasy, which is unnecessary. The patients above were also uneasy at first when stopping medication, but after long follow-up without recurrence, they felt much more at ease. Treating cancer, especially advanced cancer, is an extremely complex medical challenge, and there is still no definitively effective regimen.

Once the disease is controlled, whether it will recur is unknown. But if a patient treated with Chinese medicine shows no abnormality, they can try stopping medication and undergoing regular checkups; lifelong medication is unnecessary. This not only reduces the financial burden on the family but also avoids damage to the body from excessive medication. That said, once you have had cancer, you are an anti-cancer patient for life; after cancer is controlled, patients should still maintain a healthy lifestyle, give up bad habits, and keep regular checkups to prevent recurrence.