The Correlation of Traditional Chinese Medicine Deficiency Syndromes, Cancer Related Fatigue, and Quality of Life in Breast Cancer Patients

Background: To evaluate the correlation between the different traditional chinese medicine (TCM) deficiency syndromes, cancer related fatigue (CRF), and quality of life (QoL) in breast cancer patients. Patients and methods: Ninety-five breast cancer patients were categorized into different qi (氣 qì), blood (血 xuè), yin (陰 yin), and yang (陽 yáng) TCM deficiency syndrome groups (DSGs). We used the ICD-10 for diagnosing CRF. The QoL was assessed by the WHO-BREF and Short Form Health Survey (SF12) questionnaires. The major outcome was to compare the QoL scores between the different TCM DSGs. The second outcome was the intergroup analysis between the CRF and different TCM DSGs in breast cancer patients. Results: The patients with qi deficiency (氣虛 qì xu) had a higher correlation with CRF (p=0.001) and poorer QoL both in the WHO-BREF and SF12 survey (p