Traditional Chinese medicine（TCM） is an important treatment for malignant tumors

but its effect cannot be fully assessed as imaging changes and survival period are the current main evaluation indicators

which cannot highlight the characteristics and advantages of TCM. Symptom clusters have been a research hotspot in recent years and have gradually received attention in the field of oncology. Different symptoms within a symptom cluster are inherently related and similar to TCM syndromes. Therefore

the symptom cluster is innovatively used to evaluate the effect of TCM for treating malignant tumors

supplementing the syndrome evaluation methods

and interpreting the effects of TCM from multiple perspectives. Based on the review of the effectiveness evaluation methods of malignant tumors

this article discussed the advantages of symptom clusters in reflecting TCM syndromes and objectifying the evaluation of syndromes as well as the lack of current TCM tumor researches on overall evaluation of symptom clusters

and provides a new direction for the establishment of evaluation indicators

programs and systems for the effectiveness of TCM in the treatment of malignant tumors.