Background: Surgery is the mainstay of treatment for oesophageal squamous-cell carcinoma (OSCC) but with poor results. Attempts to improve patient outcome have been made by introducing chemotherapy (CT), radiotherapy (RT), or both (CRT). However, randomized comparisons for all these strategies are not always available.
Patients and methods: We conducted an extensive literature search for studies comparing surgery with multimodality treatment (i.e. [neo-]adjuvant CT or RT or CRT or definitive CRT). Network meta-analysis was performed in a Bayesian framewor and node-split models were built to assess inconsistency.
Results: Twenty-five trials including a total of 3866 OSCC patients were included. Neoadjuvant CRT was associated with the most robust survival advantage across different multimodality treatment options (HR 0.73; 95% credible interval [CrI] 0.63-0.86). Definitive CRT was also significantly more effective than surgery but with greater uncertainties (HR 0.62; 95%CrI 0.41-0.96). Neoadjuvant CT (HR 0.90; 95%CrI 0.76-1.07) and adjuvant CRT (HR 1.00; 95%CrI 0.70-1.40) are associated with a non-significant benefit.
Conclusions: To date, neoadjuvant CRT seems to represent the best approach to maximize the benefit of a multimodality approach.
Keywords: Chemoradiotherapy; Chemotherapy; Network meta-analysis; Oesophageal squamous-cell cancer; Radiotherapy.
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