Weekly versus triweekly cisplatin treatment in patients with locally advanced nasopharyngeal cancer during concurrent chemoradiotherapy

Background For patients with locally advanced nasopharyngeal cancer (LA-NPC), concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) is the standardized treatment. However, whether a weekly or triweekly cisplatin regimen should be used during CCRT is controversial. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis to explore differences in the effects and toxicities of the two regimens. Methods We searched PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library (until June 10, 2022). We evaluated overall survival (OS), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), locoregional recurrence–free survival (LRFS), disease-free survival (DFS) and grade ≥ 3 adverse events. The effect indices were hazard ratios (HRs) and odds ratios (ORs), and Review Manager software 5.4 (RevMan 5.4) was used for computations. Results We identified 7 studies in our analysis. There was no significant difference in OS (HR = 1.00, 95% CI 0.73–1.38, P = 0.99), DMFS (HR = 0.84, 95% CI 0.58–1.22, P = 0.36), LRFS (HR = 0.91, 95% CI 0.63–1.32, P = 0.62) or DFS (HR = 0.93, 95% CI 0.56–1.56; P = 0.78) between the weekly and triweekly cisplatin regimens. We found that the weekly cisplatin regimen was more likely to cause grade ≥ 3 hematological toxicity events than the triweekly cisplatin regimen. In addition, subgroup analyses revealed that patients undergoing CCRT and CCRT plus adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) had similar OS or DFS. Conclusion Weekly and triweekly cisplatin regimens had similar efficacy for LA-NPC. The triweekly regimen may replace the weekly regimen for LA-NPC because of lower toxicity. Larger data accumulation and more multicenter clinical trials may be needed to verify these results.