Integrative Chinese and Western Medicine and Geriatric Oncology Department

The Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine and Geriatric Oncology is a first-level clinical department of the hospital. Established in 1976, it has 32 open beds and is a comprehensive oncology treatment department characterized by combining traditional Chinese medicine with modern medicine. At different stages of cancer treatment, it brings into play the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine, leverages the complementary advantages of integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine, and focuses on patient symptom management, aiming to improve the objective response rate of cancer treatment while improving the quality of life of cancer patients and prolonging survival. While providing standardized antitumor treatment, our department uses a variety of traditional Chinese medicine treatment methods to formulate individualized integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine comprehensive diagnosis and treatment plans for patients with common solid tumors such as lung cancer, digestive tract tumors, and breast cancer. In addition to oral traditional Chinese medicines, traditional Chinese medicine injections, traditional Chinese medicine acupoint applications, and traditional Chinese medicine fumigation and washing, it also provides more than ten appropriate traditional Chinese medicine techniques, including acupuncture, moxibustion, tuina, and auricular point sticking and pressing, to relieve common clinical symptoms such as pain, nausea and vomiting, fatigue, and numbness of the hands and feet. Our department emphasizes humanistic care, creates a warm ward environment, and implements a patient-centered four-whole care model encompassing the whole person, the whole process, the whole family, and the whole team; while providing professional medical and nursing care, it also demonstrates medical staff’s respect for and care of life. After nearly 50 years of development, the department’s team has gradually expanded and now has 40 medical, nursing, research, and technical personnel, including 10 with senior professional titles and 1 Capital Famous Traditional Chinese Medicine Physician. The department has 1 doctoral supervisor, 2 master’s supervisors, and 3 postdoctoral co-supervisors at Peking University Health Science Center. Professor Li Pingping, the hospital’s former Party Secretary and the department’s academic leader, was selected at the end of 2016 as an advising teacher for the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s “National Famous Veteran Traditional Chinese Medicine Experts Inheritance Studio Construction Project”; she subsequently established “National Famous Veteran Traditional Chinese Medicine Expert Li Pingping Inheritance Studios” in Beijing, Shandong, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Qinghai, and other places, carried out promotion and inheritance work, and trained high-level traditional Chinese medicine professionals. Guided by the holistic concept of traditional Chinese medicine and the theory of treatment based on syndrome differentiation, this discipline has conducted clinical research on the quantitative assessment of tumor symptoms and traditional Chinese medicine interventions, explored the mechanisms of action of traditional Chinese medicine through basic experiments, and implemented and promoted comprehensive assessment methods and clinical research for elderly cancer patients. It has conducted relatively in-depth research on the standardized treatment of common symptoms in cancer patients, as well as the comprehensive assessment and individualized treatment of elderly cancer patients, and has accumulated rich clinical experience. As the first completers, department members have successively received the Second Prize of the Ministry of Education Science and Technology Progress Award, the Third Prize of the Huaxia Medical Science and Technology Award, and the Third Prize of the Science and Technology Award of the China Association of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine. As major core members, they have received multiple honors, including the Second Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. Our department is a national-level and Beijing municipal traditional Chinese and Western medicine collaborative “flagship” department. Key Discipline of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine Oncology of the Beijing Municipal Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine; National Demonstration Unit for Traditional Chinese Medicine Work in General Hospitals; Fourth Batch Beijing Regional General Hospital Demonstration Traditional Chinese Medicine Work Construction Project; High-Level Key Discipline of Traditional Chinese Medicine of the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine; first-batch Ministry of Health “Demonstration Ward for Standardized Cancer Pain Treatment”; Cancer Pain Treatment Center of the Chinese Medical Association; Level III laboratory of the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine—the Traditional Chinese Medicine Pharmacology (Oncology) Laboratory; Beijing Advanced Faculty and Staff Home; Beijing Workers’ Pioneer; and the Beijing Hospital Management Center Municipal Hospital Medical Humanities Development Demonstration Department.