The clinical efficacy of low-dose whole-lung irradiation in moderate-to-severe COVID-19 pneumonia: RTMX-20 trial

Abstract

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Low-Dose Whole Lung Irradiation for Treatment of COVID-19 Pneumonia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…However, our request was not responded to, and the study was removed from the meta-analysis. 12 Data extraction was completed by February 2022 for all outcomes of interest, whether included for meta-analysis or not.…”

“…A detailed process of screening is provided in Figure 1. One study was suspected of having provided incorrect results due to discrepancy between methodological analysis, reported results, and illustrated OS figures and was therefore removed from the meta-analysis 12 ; however, the presented results are discussed separately. Finally, 9 studies (with a total of 151 WLI recipients) were considered eligible to enter the analysis of aggregated 28-day OS rate of patients receiving WLI [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] (quantitative analysis).…”

“…Six studies had both intervention and control groups (115 participants in the intervention group and 98 participants as controls). 12,17,[20][21][22][23] One of these controlled studies was the excluded study due to erroneously reported results. Eventually, 4 studies were included for meta-analysis of intubation-free days within 15 days after WLI and 5 studies for meta-analysis of OS HR.…”

“…The median time from WLI to discharge was very different across the studies, reported to be between 6 to 15 days. Ganesan et al 17 reported that time from intervention to discharge was 7 (5.6-8.3) days and 13 (12)(13)(14) days in the WLI and control arms, respectively (log-rank P < .001), whereas it was 12 days (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25) in the WLI and 20 days (5-45) in the control group (P = .19) for the Hess et al trial.…”

“…Despite similar baseline characteristics and disease severity of patients in their intervention and control groups, it is postulated that the WLI group could have comprised more favorable patients. The Ortiz et al 12 study was assessed to have an overall critical risk of bias due to reporting domain. Besides deviating substantially from their initially decided endpoints as per the registered protocol (NCT04534790, clinicaltrials.…”