A randomised phase III study of palliative radiation with concomitant carboplatin for brain metastases from non-small cell carcinoma of the lung

A phase III trial of topotecan and whole brain radiation therapy for patients with CNS-metastases due to lung cancer

“…In further studies, the questions should be asked in a personal meeting or telephone call by a certain member of the team instead of just handing over the questionnaire. The results presented in this study are in line with data from the very few randomised studies, with a total of only 264 participants comparing radiochemotherapy (by using temozolomide, carboplatin or methyl-CCNU) with radiotherapy alone in patients with brain metastases of solid tumours (Ushio et al, 1991;Antonadou et al, 2002;Guerrieri et al, 2004;Verger et al, 2005), as neither of these found an influence of the overall survival. In two of these studies (Ushio et al, 1991;Antonadou et al, 2002), the objective response rates (96 vs 67% and 74 vs 36%, respectively) were significantly improved in the patients receiving combined treatment.…”

Whole Brain Radiotherapy Plus Chemotherapy in the Treatment of Brain Metastases from Lung Cancer: A Meta-analysis of 19 Randomized Controlled Trails

“…There were 1471 citations yielded, of which 1440 were removed during abstract review stage as being duplications or irrelevant to the specific question. The remaining 31 studies were to full text screening, and 19 RCTs were included (He et al, 2003;Guerrieri et al, 2004;Ge et al, 2005;Gao et al, 2009;Neuhaus et al, 2009;Dong et al, 2010;Gao, 2011;Pan et al, 2004;Peng et al, 2008;Postmus et al, 2000;Sun et al, 2009;Verger et al, 2005;Xiao et al, 2001;Xie et al, 2007;Zeng et al, 2009;Zhao et al, 2007;Zhu et al, 2009).…”

“…WBRT is the most common and effective standard treatment for lung cancer patients with multiple brain metastases or lesions that are inoperable (Antonadou et al, 2002;Guerrieri et al, 2004;Verger et al, 2005). WBRT can rapidly relieve neurologic symptoms caused by BM, control the local progression of metastasis, improve the neurological function and quality of life, and prolong progression free survival time of these patients (Postmus et al, 2000).…”

“…Figure 2 showed the results of authors' judgement of risk of biases. According to the bias risk assessment tool in the Cochrane systematic reviews handbook (Higgins et al, 2011), 6 RCTs (Postmus et al, 2000;Guerrieri et al, 2004;Verger et al, 2005;Zhao et al, 2007;Gao et al, 2009;Neuhaus et al, 2009) were randomized correctly using the method of random sequence Generation, one study (Xiao et al, 2001) was randomized incorrectly by grouping the patients in the order of admission, and the remain 12 RCTs were just mentioned "randomized" but unclear how to performed. Five RCTs used correct allocation concealment strategies (He et al, 2003;Ge et al, 2005;Sun et al, 2009;Xie et al, 2007;, but the other 14 failed to describe the methods of allocation concealment.…”

“…2003; Guerrieri et al, 2004;Li et al, 2004;Pan et al, 2004;Ge et al, 2005;Verger et al, 2005;Xie et al, 2007;Zhao et al, 2007;Fan et al, 2008;Peng et al, 2008;Wang et al, 2008;Gao et al, 2009;Neuhaus et al, 2009;Sun et al, 2009;Zeng et al, 2009;Zhu et al, 2009;Dong et al, 2010;Gao, 2011;Guo, 2011). However, not all the results show the differences have statistical significance, and the sample sizes of some studies are small.…”