Wenmei Su, Zhennan Lai, Lixia Li, YanmingLin, Zhixiong Yang

Department of Oncology, Affiliated Hospital ofGuangdong Medical College

Objective:To perform ameta-analysis on diagnosedbrain metastases patients treated with whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT) andstereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) boost versus WBRT alone, or inpatients treatedwith SRT alone versus WBRT and SRT boost. Method: A comprehensiveelectronic search was conducted via the Internet retrieval system toidentifyeligible studies. The primary outcomes included 1-year local controlrate (LCR), 1-year overall survival rate (OS), and 2-year OS. Odds ratios and95% confidence interval were calculated to compare the effects. Result: Twelvestudies with 986 patients were eligible for this meta-analysis. With regardstothe 1-year LCR, SRT and WBRT boost showed a significant improvement comparedwith SRT alone or WBRT alone. When targeted on 1-year and 2-year OS, we foundobvious differences favoring SRT plus WBRT rather than WBRT alone, but nostatistical difference between SRT combined with WBRT and SRT alone. Conclusion:For selectedpatients, the treatment of SRT and WBTR boost performed anobviously bettereffect in 1-year LCR, 1-year and 2-year OS compared with WBRTalone. However, only LCR but no OS benefit was obtained for SRT plus WBRT boostcompared with SRT alone. Thus, to improve the therapeutic effect, SRT combinedwith WBRT should be a routine treatment for patients with brain metastases oflung cancer.

Key Words: Stereotacticradiotherapy  whole brain radiotherapy