Accelerated or hyperfractionated radiotherapy for esophageal carcinoma: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Yingyu Liu,1 Changgui Kou,1 Yingying Su,1 Yangyu Zhang,1 Yueyue You,1 Lili Zhang,1 Mohan Wang,1 Yingli Fu,1 Xiaojun Ren,2 Yanming Yang2 1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Jilin University, 2Department of Radiotherapy, Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, People’sRepublic of China Objective: The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of modified (accelerated and/or hyperfractionated) radiotherapy in the treatment of esophageal carcinoma, compared with conventional radiotherapy.Methods: Studies published in the PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, CBM, VIP, CNKI and Wanfang databases in the most recent two decades were searched for use in this meta-analysis. Only randomized controlled trials were included. The heterogeneity analysis and calculation of the pooled odds ratio (OR) were performed using RevMan 5.3 software. The assessment of publication bias and sensitivity analyses was conducted using Stata 13.0 software.Results: Twenty trials with a total of 1,742 Chinese patients who met the inclusion criteria were included. The pooled results showed that modified radiotherapy improved the response rate compared with conventional schedules (OR =3.90, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.47–6.16, P