Some Thoughts on My TCM Treatment of Neuroblastoma

I have treated quite a number of children with neuroblastoma. Some, after being treated by me with pure TCM, have done very well: the tumors shrank or even disappeared, and the children enjoy a good quality of life. There are also some I could not bring under control; after my treatment they went to Western medicine. Others are currently receiving integrated Chinese-Western treatment.

Because I have treated a sizable number of neuroblastoma patients, I have been able to observe some of their responses after Chinese and Western treatment and to form some direct impressions and some preliminary ideas.

I now respectfully present this article for the criticism of experts. In future I will write more articles on TCM treatment of neuroblastoma, so that parents of affected children may better understand the principles behind TCM treatment of pediatric tumors.

Over the past year, children with neuroblastoma coming to see me have accounted for roughly forty percent of my new patients. Because there are few TCM doctors in China who specialize in diagnosing and treating neuroblastoma, the number of neuroblastoma patients I see has been growing faster and faster, and neuroblastoma may well become one of the main focuses of the rest of my career.

Neuroblastoma is a common solid tumor of childhood. TCM has very little literature to draw on for diagnosing and treating it. Records of pediatric tumors in ancient TCM literature are virtually zero, and modern books on TCM anticancer treatment contain no chapter on neuroblastoma at all.

Only scattered treatment cases appear in the medical records of a few doctors. So writing articles on TCM diagnosis and treatment of pediatric neuroblastoma based on clinical experience is a duty I cannot shirk. I also hope more TCM doctors will share their experience treating neuroblastoma.

Chinese-language literature on Western treatment of neuroblastoma is also very sparse. Compared with common cancers such as lung cancer, neuroblastoma is a rare cancer. So there are currently very few monographs on neuroblastoma in China, mainly the books Pediatric Neuroblastoma and Induced Differentiation Therapy of Neuroblastoma edited by Professor Zhang Jinhua. There is also a chapter on neuroblastoma in the Guidelines for Diagnosis and Treatment of Childhood Solid Tumors edited by Jin Xianqing and Shi Chengren.

Although I research TCM anticancer treatment, for a long time I refused to take on pediatric tumor patients. Because facing this special group requires great psychological fortitude. Many children are still in swaddling clothes when tormented by this highly malignant tumor; it is truly heart-rending to behold.

Later, parents of some children with tumors gradually learned of me from various TCM anticancer communities. A few children, after repeated ineffective Chinese and Western treatments, insisted on coming to me to give it a try, and the results were tolerable. In a few, the tumor shrank or disappeared markedly, and the children were able to attend school and live normally. Word of mouth then spread among patients in various online patient groups and at children's hospitals around the country, which gave me a high reputation among families of children with neuroblastoma.

This was truly quite unexpected. I had published many articles on other tumors but very few on neuroblastoma, yet more neuroblastoma patients came to see me than patients with any other kind of tumor.

It turns out that how well known a doctor becomes in a field does not depend on how many articles he has published there; sometimes it is some chance factor that steers a doctor's research direction.

When I first began studying cancer, I focused on gastric cancer—because my mother had gastric cancer. But in recent years I have made my name among patients with lung cancer, ovarian cancer, liposarcoma, lymphoma, and neuroblastoma. On the other hand, the gastric cancer to which I devoted the most effort is the area where fewest people know me.

Before I took on my first neuroblastoma child, I knew nothing about neuroblastoma. The early children who came to me were, without exception, stage-4 high-risk cases who had repeatedly failed Western treatment, been given up on by Western doctors, and then failed other TCM treatments as well.

Because of the lack of relevant literature, I had no basis to refer to for treating these children. I could only bite the bullet and prescribe drugs following the approach I use for common adult tumors such as gastric, lung, and liver cancer, merely adjusting the dosages downward.

I had thought such treatment might be ineffective, but the unexpected happened. These formulas, composed of herbs that use poison to attack poison, soften hard masses and dissipate nodules, activate blood and resolve stasis, and boost qi and nourish blood, not only proved effective in these children but their efficacy was more pronounced and longer-lasting than what I see in adult solid tumors.

My medicines are actually very ordinary. I commonly use heat-clearing and detoxifying herbs such as dandelion, Scutellaria barbata, oldenlandia, honeysuckle, honeysuckle stem, gardenia, and scutellaria, combined with heat-clearing, blood-cooling, and swelling-reducing herbs such as scrophularia, salvia, rehmannia root, moutan, and red peony, plus phlegm-resolving and nodule-dispersing herbs such as zhe fritillaria, chuan fritillaria, processed pinellia, arisaema, sargassum, ecklonia, and pumice, together with blood-activating and swelling-reducing herbs such as curcuma sparrganium, myrrh, frankincense, notopterygium, and angelica pubescens, and poison-attacking-poison herbs such as centipede, scorpion, garcinia, subprostrate sophora, flavescens, julida, and toad venom.

And according to the child's physical condition, I moderately combine them with root-supporting formulas such as Liuwei Dihuang Wan (Six-Ingredient Rehmannia Pill), Zhibai Dihuang Wan, Shiquan Dabu Tang (Ten-Inclusive Great Tonifying Decoction), Guipi Tang (Spleen-Returning Decoction), Buzhong Yiqi Tang (Middle-Supplementing Qi-Boosting Decoction), Huangqi Buxue Tang, Liujunzi Tang (Six Gentlemen Decoction), and Bazhen Tang (Eight Treasures Decoction)—supporting the righteous while dispelling the pathogen. I review the child and adjust the formula every two or three months, and before I knew it, some children's tumors had shrunk.

Overall, in treating neuroblastoma children, on the one hand I adhere to pattern differentiation and treatment, prescribing different formulas for each child's different physical condition to adjust their state. On the other hand I adhere to disease differentiation and treatment, following the conventional TCM approach to tumors, using various herbs that soften hard masses and dissipate nodules, use poison to attack poison, and activate blood and reduce swelling to attack the tumor.

I maintain disease differentiation as the mainstay and pattern differentiation as secondary, insisting on combining specialized treatment for a specific disease with pattern differentiation—attacking the tumor while regulating the child's body. That is why some of my empirical formulas have repeatable effects in different children.

Even now I have not taken on many early-stage neuroblastoma children. And among those who came to me having had no Western treatment at all and relying on TCM alone, there has been only one. Nearly all the rest were stage-4 high-risk children who had undergone surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy and were being maintained on retinoids; some had also gone to Singapore, Spain, and elsewhere for other treatments.

In the early days I refused to take on neuroblastoma children in critical condition, but later, unable to refuse the pleas of certain parents, I began to take them on. Although the neuroblastoma children I took on early were, in the Western view, stage-4 high-risk patients, their basic states—eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, and sleeping—were still decent, which may be an important reason these children responded so well to treatment.

Many of the neuroblastoma children I have treated recently no longer enjoy the good physical condition of those I took on early. Some can only come to me in a wheelchair pushed by their parents. And because most children are seriously ill, and because neuroblastoma in China is still treated mainly by Western medicine, neither the children nor their Western attending doctors can fully trust TCM. So nearly 90% of the children I have taken on in recent years are receiving both Western and Chinese treatment at the same time.

The treatment of some children is deeply regrettable. My medication had begun to show results—the tumor shrank, and markers such as neuron-specific enolase and urinary vanillylmandelic acid declined—but the parents still could not set their minds at ease, still dared not rely on TCM alone, and insisted on combining Western surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy before they felt secure. Regrettably, many of the children treated with such integrated Chinese-Western therapy progressed rapidly, with outcomes far worse than the children I have seen treated with TCM alone or Western medicine alone.

On the treatment of neuroblastoma, Chinese and Western medicine also lack communication. I have heard that some Western doctors, while treating neuroblastoma children with Western methods, also give the children some root-supporting patent medicines, but do not use anticancer, swelling-reducing patent medicines or herbal decoctions. So integrated Chinese-Western treatment of neuroblastoma is still an academic blank waiting for us to fill.

I used to think children in especially critical condition might have no hope of treatment at all, and so I took a stance of giving up. But over the past year I have taken on a few children in especially critical condition whose parents were already in despair, saying they were willing to treat a dead horse as a living one and letting me treat it as a clinical trial, prescribing for their child. So I plucked up my courage and wrote a few formulas, and astonishingly, some of these children actually came back from the dead.

Judging from the vital signs of some of these children, had they been adult cancer patients they would basically have been beyond hope, but pediatric patients still hold the possibility of working miracles. Perhaps this is because pediatric illnesses have the characteristic of "readily becoming excess or deficiency," and are also more easily cured than in adults.

I am ashamed to say that when I first treated these children, because I had so many adult cancer patients, I had neither the time nor the energy to study pediatric monographs; I did not even have time to carefully read a pediatric classic like Qian Yi's Xiao'er Yao Zheng Zhi Jue (Key to Therapeutics of Children's Diseases). Only later, when there were truly too many children and I had not only to solve their tumor problem but also to understand the various common pediatric illnesses that arose, did I read pediatric monographs and learn some of the basic characteristics of pediatric disease.

Although I already have a fair reputation among families of children with neuroblastoma, my own research in pediatric tumors is still only at the starting stage. The great majority of TCM doctors in China today, like me at the outset, directly turn away children with tumors. Pediatric problems are truly too complex, and many doctors are afraid of treating pediatric tumors.

If one can study the pediatric monographs thoroughly and, on top of a foundation in TCM anticancer treatment, treat pediatric tumors, the results may be even better. I myself am currently working in this direction, reading both Chinese and Western pediatric monographs.

Solving the problem of pediatric tumors requires multidisciplinary collaboration between Chinese and Western medicine; there is no way to produce results by a crash effort. TCM treatment of pediatric tumors like neuroblastoma also has a long road ahead. I hope I will have the chance to accompany these child tumor patients I am treating as they grow; watching them grow up healthy is my greatest wish.

Only when the efficacy of TCM in treating such tumors becomes more and more reliable, and the number of successful cases grows, will the parents of affected children dare to use TCM to fight cancer.

At present, at least I myself can only, like salvage-picking, pick up a few children whom Western medicine has given up on and treat them, slowly using the TCM approach of supporting the righteous and dispelling evil to test whether I can bring more hope to these neuroblastoma families, letting them see that beyond conventional surgery and chemoradiotherapy there is another possibility of curing their child.