Browsing by Author "Shangkuan, Wei-Chuan"

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The use of adjunctive traditional Chinese medicine therapy and survival outcome in patients with head and neck cancer: a nationwide population-based cohort study
(2015-12-01)
Lin, Hung-Che
;
Lin, Cheng-Li
;
Huang, Wen-Yen
;
Shangkuan, Wei-Chuan
;
Kang, Bor-Hwang
Background: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is widely used in the treatment of patients with several types of cancer. However, no large-scale clinical studies have evaluated whether TCM is associated with better survival in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC). Methods: The Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database was used to conduct a retrospective cohort study of patients with HNC between 2001 and 2011. The patients with HNC were separated into TCM users and non-users, and Cox regression models were applied to determine the association between the use of TCM and survival outcome. Results: The TCM and comparison cohorts comprised data for 2966 and 2670 patients, respectively. The mean age was 51.3 years in the TCM cohort and 51.7 years in the comparison cohort. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the use of TCM was significantly associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality by 32% (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.68; 95% confidence interval, 0.62-0.75). Patients with longer TCM use had a lower mortality rate (P for trend<0.001). Conclusions: Our study showed that adjunctive therapy with TCM is associated with higher survival outcome. However, some limitations exist, such as the lack of information of cancer stage. In addition, causality cannot be assessed with this retrospective study. A randomized controlled trial to test the effect of adjunctive TCM therapy in HNC patients is needed.
Vascular anatomy is a determining factor of successful submental flap raising: a retrospective study of 70 clinical cases
(2017-09-19)
Lin, Hung-Che
;
Huan, Yuahn-Sieh
;
Chu, Yueng-Hsiang
;
Liu, Shao-Cheng
;
Shangkuan, Wei-Chuan
The vascular anatomy of submental flaps (SFs) represents a determining factor in successful SF raising. However, little attention has been focused on the venous return of SFs. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate SF venous return. This study enrolled patients who underwent SF reconstructive surgery in a tertiary referral center between November 2009 and October 2016. The drainage pathway of the SF venous return was routinely identified during the course of our operations to prevent damage during head and neck surgery. The venous return data of 70 patients were reviewed. The size of the flaps ranged from 15 to 84 cm(2), and total flap loss was not observed in the case series. All of the submental arteries originated from the facial artery; however, the submental veins of 70 patients returned to either the internal jugular vein (IJV, 72.9%) or the external jugular vein (EJV, 27.1%). Our data suggest that drainage of the submental vein into the EJV, which has been previously overlooked, should receive greater attention during SF surgeries. The results support mandatory preservation of the EJV and IJV and indicate that vascular anatomy is a determining factor for successful SF raising.