Approximately half or more of patients diagnosed with late malignant tumors may suffer from metastatic bone pain, effective palliation of pain becomes an important part of comprehensive therapy for malignant tumors. In this study, we examined the efficacy and safety of the combined regimen of cryoablation and zoledronic acid in patients of bone metastatic pain. A total of 84 subjects were randomly divided into three groups, and underwent treatments of cryoablation plus zoledronic acid, cryoablation alone, zoledronic acid alone between June 2009 and March 2012. Patients responses had been assessed for a total of 6 months by using the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI)-Short Form. The results showed that the mean response of worst and average pain significantly dropped at week 2 (all P < 0.05) in group with cryoablation treatment but at week 4 (all P < 0.05) in group with zoledronic acid treatment. While between week 16 and week 24, zoledronic acid treatments showed more durable response to worst and average pain compared to cryoablation (all P < 0.05). Cryoablation plus zoledronic acid regimen showed significant drop in worst and average pain between week 1 and week 4 compared to zoledronic acid alone (all P < 0.05) and more durable effect on bone metastatic pain between week 12 and week 24 than cryoablation alone (all P < 0.05). Additionally, no serious adverse effects and complication were observed by this combination use. In conclusion, cryoablation combined with zoledronic acid was safe and effective regimen and showed its superiority of fast response and durable effect on painful bone metastases.
The combination of 125I with TACE was more effective than TACE without the radioactive seeds for treating patients with unresectable HCC with obstructive jaundice. Future prospective trials with larger samples will be required to validate these results.
Background
Continuing therapy for aggressive non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after first-line treatment (FLT) is challenging. The clinical efficacy of second-line chemotherapy (SLCT) for progressive NSCLC is limited. In this meta-analysis, we aim to evaluate the clinical efficacy of the combination of I-125 seeds brachytherapy (ISB) and SLCT in progressive NSCLC after FLT.
Methods
The PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang, and VIP databases were screened for relevant publications until September 2021. Meta-analyses are conducted by RevMan 5.3 and Stata 12.0.
Results
Our meta-analysis encompassed 6 studies (4 retrospective studies and 2 randomized controlled trials), which included 272 patients that underwent ISB with SLCT (combined group) and 257 patients that received SLCT alone (chemotherapy alone group). The complete response (24.7% vs. 7.0%, P < 0.00001), treatment response (65.7% vs. 38.1%, P = 0.0002), and disease control (95.2% vs. 80.4%, P < 0.00001) rates are markedly elevated for patients receiving combined therapy versus those receiving chemotherapy alone. Moreover, pooled progression-free survival (P = 0.0001) and overall survival (P < 0.00001) were remarkably extended for patients that received the combination therapy, while no obvious differences were detected in the pooled myelosuppression (39.0% vs. 30.6%, P = 0.05) and gastrointestinal response (38.5% vs. 35.9%, P = 0.52) rates between 2 groups. Significant heterogeneity was found in the endpoints of the treatment response and progression-free survival.
Conclusions
This meta-analysis demonstrated that ISB could enhance the clinical efficacy of SLCT in patients with progressive NSCLC after FLT without inducing major toxic side effects.
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