The role of concurrent chemoradiotherapy in the treatment of locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma among endemic population: a meta-analysis of the phase iii randomized trials

BMC Cancer

Research Article

Ming-Huang Hong¹  Qing Liu¹  Ying Guo¹  Yang Zhang¹  Bijesh Ghimire²  Zhong-Zhen Guan²  Li Zhang²  Yi-Jun Huang³  Chong Zhao⁴ 

[1] Clinical Trials Center, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in Southern China, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou, China;Department of Medical Oncology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou, China;Department of Pharmacology, Medical School of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China;Department of Radiation Oncology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou, China;

关键词: Overall Survival;    Relative Risk;    Adjuvant Chemotherapy;    Endemic Area;    Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2407-10-558

 received in 2010-06-10, accepted in 2010-10-15,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe main objective of this meta-analysis was to determine the clinical benefit of concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) compared with radiation alone (RT) in the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients in endemic geographic areas.MethodsUsing a prospective meta-analysis protocol, two independent investigators reviewed the publications and extracted the data. Published randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in which patients with NPC in endemic areas were randomly assigned to receive CCRT or RT alone were included.ResultsSeven trials (totally 1608 patients) were eligible. Risk ratios (RRs) of 0.63 (95% CI, 0.50 to 0.80), 0.76 (95% CI, 0.61 to 0.93) and 0.74 (95% CI, 0.62 to 0.89) were observed for 2, 3 and 5 years OS respectively in favor of the CCRT group. The RRs were larger than that detected in the previously reported meta-analyses (including both endemic and non-endemic), indicating that the relative benefit of survival was smaller than what considered before.ConclusionsThis is the first meta-analysis of CCRT vs. RT alone in NPC treatment which included studies only done in endemic area. The results confirmed that CCRT was more beneficial compared with RT alone. However, the relative benefit of CCRT in endemic population might be less than that from previous meta-analyses.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Zhang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.