We were in Xi'an in December 2011 and spent 3 weeks looking at their facilities and doing 3 rounds of SPDT. The Xi'an facility is a sister hospital to the Guangzhou facility and basically offers identical treatments - SPDT, Gene therapy, ozone, HIFU etc..
Our frank opinion? - look elsewhere - or at the very least be cautious about your expectations and the money you will have to spend.
More Detail: We would serious question the economic cost of the SPDT treatment. It costs RMB90,000 (=about US$15,000 at current exchange rates) for each of 2 rounds of SPDT. Each round consists of two days of putting 2 x 50ml of sensitiser via drops under the tongue, followed by 3 days of PDT and SDT treatment. The PDT treatment is 20 minutes under an LED bed (similar to a tanning salon). The SDT is 2 x 20 minutes in a water bath with sonic receptors on the bottom and moving similar receptors on the top. These machines would be very easy to reproduce or at least replicate in some fashion at much less than the cost of one treatment. That leaves the proprietary chlorophyll sensitiser which it would appear to be the expensive bit.
Keep in mind that hospital treatment is China is ridiculously cheap. A senior nurse in China would receive about US$500 per month in wages. All of the treatments that are comparable to western hospitals (such as gene tests, dendritic cell therapy) are about 1/3rdto 1/5thof the price you would pay elsewhere. But SPDT is different and in our mind way overpriced for what it is. We surmised (but can in no way confirm) that someone is making a lot of money from having a monopoly on that sensitiser.
You might say that that is fine – if it worked. We saw no evidence of any improvements caused by SPDT alone. We investigated most of the previous patients (about 6 in total) and we could not find one that was still alive. The Chinese practice serious over servicing. They will recommend a combination of all of their treatments all to be done concurrently. Sounds good but even if it did offer improvement, there is no way to know which one is effective. There seems to be no follow up to the treatment or any scientific study of results.
We personally witnessed a patient pay in excess of A$115,000 for treatments only to be told by their Australian oncologist when they arrived home that there was no improvement – and in fact the cancer had regressed. And of course there is no money back guarantee.
Having said all of that, I still feel that there is an opportunity to get some scientifically verifiable treatments in China without the obvious regulatory restrictions of the western world.
I am sure that we will get people objecting to our view but I think it only fair to share our unbiased experience and opinion. We do this to try and moderate some of the expectations that some may have of the options in China.