Objective: The goals of this work was to analyse the cost of Shenqi Fuzheng injection-an extraction of a Chinese traditional herbs on reducing adverse effects in lung cancer patients during chemotherapy.
Methods: In a randomized cross-over trial, each patient completed two identical cisplatin-based chemotherapy cycles, one with Shenqi Fuzheng injection, another without Shenqi Fuzheng injection. Adverse effects and change scores of quality of life (QOL) during chemotherapy were compared in tow cycles. The direct cost dealing with adverse effect and cost-effectiveness analysis were taken.
Results: One hundred and thirty were enrolled with 123 of whom were evaluable. The patient characteristics were well balanced between the two groups. The chemotherapy cycles with Shenqi Fuzheng injection spent 220.5 more Chinese yuan, but the adverse effect of leukopenia, thrombocytopenia and vomiting were slight different and the change of score of several QOL domains showed significant better as compared to those in another cycle.
Conclusion: Shenqi Fuzheng injection could reduce the severity of toxicity related to chemotherapy and improve the QOL of patients and had some benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness.