Investigation on Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer among Elderly Patients Treated with Chinese Herbal Medicine versus Chemotherapy: A Pooled Analysis of Individual Data

Table 1

Key characteristics of three studies.

Study design	Patients	Intervention and Control	Outcomes	Enrollment Period	Follow up End
RCT; [22]	(1) Advanced NSCLC; (2) EGFR wild type or untested; (3) Age ⩾ 18 years old; (4) KPS ⩾ 60; (5) Suitable for CT; (6) Expected life span of three months or more; (7) Previous treatment should be stopped for at least 1 month.	CHM; vs; CHM +CT; vs; CT	Overall Survival	30/12/2001; -; 23/07/2003	31/01/2004
Prospective Cohort Study; [23]	(1) Advanced NSCLC; (2) EGFR wild type or untested; (3) Age ⩾ 60 years old; (4) KPS ⩾ 60; (5) Previous treatment should be stopped for at least 1 month.	CHM; vs; CT or BSC	Overall Survival	12/03/2008; -; 29/06/2010	31/12/2010
Retrospective; Cohort Study; [21]	(1) Advanced NSCLC; (2) EGFR wild type or untested; (3) Age ⩾ 18 years old; (4) KPS ⩾ 60; (5) All initial treatment; (6) Patients received EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors excluded.; (7) The duration of treatment patients received should be at least 1.5 months.	CHM; vs; CHM +CT; vs; CT	Overall Survival	12/08/2010; -; 20/04/2016	31/10/2016.

Note: NSCLC, non-small-cell lung cancer; EGFR, epidermal growth factor receptor; KPS, Karnofsky performance scores; CHM, Chinese herbal medicine; CT, chemotherapy; BSC, best supportive care; RCT, randomized controlled trial.