Traditional Chinese combined with western therapy in treatment of upper extremity edema after breast cancer surgery: A meta-analysis

Objective:To evaluate clinical efficacy by traditional Chinese combined with western therapy to treat upper extremity edema after breast cancer surgery.The clinical efficacy was described by the effective rate and the change of peripheral diameter of the affected limb.Methods:National Knowledge Internet(CNKI),Wan Fang Digital Journals(Wan Fang),VIP Chinese periodical service platform(VIP),Chinese biomedical literature service system(CBM),PubMed and EMBASE were searched on computer.And clinical randomized controlled trials(RCT)of the treatment of upper extremity edema after breast cancer surgery with integration of Chinese and western treatment were selected.The time was from January 2011 to May 2020.Upper extremity edema after breast cancer surgery was the first key word and the second was traditional Chinese combined with western therapy.Note Express was used to screen and extract literature.Bias risks of all the literature included in the study were evaluated and analyzed by RevMan5.3 software.Results:10 randomized controlled clinical tests,644 patients in conformity to the inclusion criteria,9 for the observation of curative effectiveness,5 of changes in limb circumference.322 cases were included in the observation group and the same number of cases in the control group,all of which were in Chinese.The results expressed that the curative effect in the observation group was 91.1%,and it was higher than the curative effect in the control group treated by single western treatment obviously,and it was only 68.9%[95%CI(1.22,1.44),Z=6.55,P<0.00001].The peripheral diameter shrinking degree of the affected limb in the observation group was also clearly higher than that in the control group which was healed by simple western treatment[95%CI(-0.98,-0.64),Z=9.40,P<0.00001].Conclusion:Traditional Chinese combined with western therapy treating upper extremity edema after the surgery of breast cancer had a notable clinical effect,which treated the disease and effectively lessened the peripheral diameter of the affected limb.The method was worthy of clinical application.However,owing to the low quality of the included documents,further discussion and learning were still needed.