Concurrent chemoradiotherapy plus adjuvant chemotherapy versus concurrent chemoradiotherapy alone in patients with locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma: a phase 3 multicentre randomised controlled trial

Induction chemotherapy in the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma: Clinical outcomes and patterns of care

“…Patients were considered to have received induction chemotherapy if it was started ≥43 days before the start of RT. This time point was chosen as it would allow for administration of 2‐3 cycles of induction chemotherapy used in recent trials 7, 8, 10. Patients were considered to have received concurrent CRT if chemotherapy started within 21 days after the start of RT as this would allow for overlap of at least 2‐3 cycles of concurrent chemotherapy with RT.…”

“…There have been several studies that have evaluated additional cycles of chemotherapy in the adjuvant setting without finding significant survival benefit 5, 7. The primary limitation of the preceding trials has been a low compliance rate of adjuvant chemotherapy with approximately 40‐50% patients not completing the prescribed chemotherapy regimen 7.…”

“…The primary limitation of the preceding trials has been a low compliance rate of adjuvant chemotherapy with approximately 40‐50% patients not completing the prescribed chemotherapy regimen 7. Alternatively, induction chemotherapy is thought to be better tolerated and may result in early eradication of micrometastasis, leading to the hypothesis that it may result in improved survival.…”

Comparison of Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy Followed by Adjuvant Chemotherapy Versus Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy Alone in Locoregionally Advanced Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: a Meta-analysis of 793 Patients from 5 Randomized Controlled Trials

“…Of the last 12 articles, three articles were discarded CCRT, concurrent chemoradiotherapy; AC, adjuvant chemotherapy; 3DRT, three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy; IMRT, intensity-modulated radiotherapy; C, cisplatin; 5-Fu, 5-fluorouracil; UFT, uracil and tegafur in 4:1 molar ratio; VBM, vincristine 2mg, bleomycin 30mg, methotrexate 150mg/m 2 ; WHO, world health organization; AJCC, American Joint Committee on Cancer (Xu et al, 2011), one lacked essential data (Wen et al, 2007), one had obvious errors in data (Chen et al, 2010). Then, Of the last 9 articles, three trials were from the same research centers (Liang et al, 2008;Chen et al, 2009;Chen et al, 2012) and in order to avoid data reduplication, we only included the latest one (Chen et al, 2012). The other three trials (Kwong et al, 2004;Kwong et al, 2006;Kwong et al, 2008) were from the same study but were reported in different follow-ups by the University of Hong Kong and Queen Mary Hospital of Hong Kong.…”

“…Now several randomized controlled trials (RCTs) compared the therapy of CCRT followed by AC with CCRT alone (Kwong et al, 2004;Xu et al, 2008;Ding et al, 2011;Chen et al, 2012;Huang et al, 2012), but none of them were large enough to show a statistically significant effect. This meta-analysis was conducted to give an overview of all eligible RCTs comparing CCRT followed by AC with CCRT alone.…”