Shrinking a Lung Cancer Patient's Tumor Again Using the "Same Disease, Same Treatment" Approach

Not long ago I published an article, Three Medical Cases of Treating Lung Cancer and Pulmonary Nodules with "Same Disease, Same Treatment", in which I described using the same treatment method and the same medication regimen for two lung cancer patients and one pulmonary nodule patient. The results were: in one lung cancer patient the tumor disappeared completely; in another, after one year of treatment the tumor was suppressed and stopped growing; and in the pulmonary nodule patient, after two months of treatment the nodule shrank by half. All three patients, after diagnosis, sought TCM treatment directly from me without any Western medical treatment.

Yesterday, another of my lung cancer patients, a Mr. Yin, went to the hospital for a follow-up, and his lung tumor had shrunk by one centimeter. This patient, too, after diagnosis had received no other treatment and came directly to me for two and a half months of treatment using the same method and regimen as the three patients above.

The patient, Mr. Yin, is from Dali, Yunnan Province, 71 years old, 1.80 m tall, and weighing 57 kg. Because of a cough lasting over five months, he was hospitalized (hospital no. 0001341026) at Yunnan Cancer Hospital (the Third Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University) from May 31 to June 2, 2021, and was diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma of the right middle lobe with bilateral lung metastases. Worried about the poor efficacy and severe side effects expected from treating a stage 4 lung tumor, the patient and his family refused further treatment and requested discharge. On June 3, the patient's daughter-in-law, on a referral, came to me and expressed the family's wish to seek a conservative TCM treatment plan.

I decided to use the lung cancer regimen I have researched in recent years, treating him with more than twenty herbs including Huangqi (Astragalus), Huangjing (Polygonatum), Yiyiren (Coix Seed), Danggui (Angelica), Banmao (Cantharis), Chansu (Toad Venom), Shanqu Chong (Julid), Dilong (Earthworm), Shexiang (Musk), and Dingxiang (Clove). I instructed him to take the medicine for 1–2 courses (each course about 40 days) and then return for a follow-up to judge efficacy; if effective, continue; if not, seek another method.

After two and a half months of medication, follow-up showed that the largest tumor in the right lung had shrunk from 5.1 x 3.8 cm to 4.1 x 3.4 cm. The patient's family was overjoyed, and I was very pleased as well.

In diagnosing and treating this patient, I relied on the Western examination reports: once lung cancer was confirmed, I directly applied the lung-cancer regimen, rather than using the TCM four-examination method (observation, listening/smelling, inquiry, palpation) and differentiating yin-yang, exterior-interior, cold-heat, deficiency-excess to create an individualized formula. The three patients published in the earlier article were the same: blocked by the pandemic, they could not be seen in person, and I prescribed directly based only on Western examination reports. Moreover, the medication regimen for all four patients was exactly the same, and all achieved reasonably satisfactory results. This shows that the "same disease, same treatment" approach I have researched is not merely a lucky fluke on one or two cases.

TCM treatment of cancer is often criticized because its efficacy is hard to replicate and cannot produce evidence-based medicine evidence. Some TCM physicians also overemphasize pattern differentiation and "one person, one formula," which makes TCM cancer treatment hard to standardize and hard to prove with data as reliable and repeatable. In recent years I have been researching the dedicated-disease, dedicated-treatment path for cancer; fortunately I have had the chance to participate in clinical practice and accumulate clinical data on the few patients who use only my regimen and no other treatment methods, so as to verify the feasibility of treating cancer with dedicated TCM protocols. In the end, the efficacy of TCM in cancer must be proven by data, not by TCM logic, for confirmation or refutation.

With a science and engineering background, I value experiment over theory. I personally feel that treating diseases like cancer according to traditional TCM pattern differentiation—relying on pulse diagnosis and "one person, one formula"—is not very reliable. Even if one occasionally cures a patient or two, it is hard to guarantee efficacy in others, and this approach over-relies on the physician's personal skill and is hard to popularize.

But if one thoroughly grasps the principle by which TCM formulas treat disease, has a deep understanding of cancer's essence as "root deficiency with excess pathogen," uses the method of supporting the root and expelling pathogen, researches dedicated-disease treatment, and explores fixed medication regimens—treating cancer as a single, distinctive disease with certain common features, as in the "same disease, same treatment" method I use—the success rate of cancer treatment can be improved.

Because modern cancer patients mostly use multiple methods together and pure TCM treatment is rare, although I have treated many lung cancer patients it is hard to exclude the contribution of Western medicine from their outcomes. But there are always a few patients who choose pure TCM treatment, and their outcomes can exclude the influence of other factors. I will accumulate more such cases in the future to further confirm the feasibility and scientific validity of this "same disease, same treatment" approach.