Back to September 2005: Traditional Chinese Medicine
Chinese medicine and surgery?
- Question from FionaMay: Have you had patients who are going through surgery for breast cancer and also want to use Chinese or another complementary medicine? What do you tell them?
- Answer —Raymond Chang, M.D.: Surgery is not a modality of treatment in Chinese medicine. It's thought to be bad to open one up—the gas, the vital Qi, the vital air would escape if you cut a hole. Again, this may not be scientific but it's traditional Chinese medicine.
So we use the same Qi-enhancing tonics that we refer to above. I mentioned the herbs that boost white-blood-cell counts. It's the same kind of thing that's used during or after surgery. There are foods to eat that enhance healing; some types of fish, for example, to repair the leakage of vital energy due to surgery.