Radiotherapy plus thermotherapy for esophageal carcinoma: A Meta-analysis

To evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of Thermotherapy plus Radiotherapy (TRT) for esophageal carcinoma, and to provide the reference for clinical practice and research. We searched foreign databases as Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMBASE and Chinese ones as CBM, CNKI, VIP and Wanfang with computer and also retrieved other sources as supplying, such as tracing related references. All relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were collected to compare TRT and radiotherapy alone. The quality of the included studies was assessed by adequate standard base on outcomes and the clinical instance. Meta-analysis was conducted by RevMan 5. 1 software. Fifteen RCTs were involved with 1 279 patients included. Meta-analysis showed: Comparing TRT with pure radiotherapy, there were significant difference on the indicators of 1, 2, 3, 5-year survival rate, 1-year local control rate, total effective rate; the OR (95%CI) value were 2.46 (1.80-3.36), 1.99 (1.14-3.50), 2.05 (1.50-2.80), 1.82 (1.21-2.75), 2.82 (1.32-6.01), and 4.33 (2.62-7.14) respectively. There was no significant difference on the indicators of myelosuppression, alimentary canal reactions, radiation pneumonitis, radioactive pulmonary fibrosis, radiation esophagitis and radioactive esophageal strictures. Compared with the radiotherapy alone, TRT can improve long-term survival rate and short-term curative effect, and its safety can be accepted. Its more comprehensive security still needs to be further verified by more large sample and high quality RCTs.