Stereotactic body radiation therapy versus surgery for patients with early-stage non–small cell lung cancer( ≤ 5cm): A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is considered as the preferred treatment method for inoperable early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, there is still a debate on the efficacy of SBRT and surgery. This meta-analysis aimed to compare survival outcomes of SBRT and surgery for early-stage NSCLC (≤5cm).Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to compare survival outcomes of surgery and SBRT. And the pooled analysis was conducted with STATA 14.0 software. Results: Thirty-nine comparative studies were included for systematic review and twenty-eight of which for quantitative analysis. Compared with SBRT, overall survival (OS) was superior after surgical resection, included lobectomy, sublobar resection, video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, and thoracotomy, for patients with early-stage NSCLC (≤5cm). And the results of subgroup analysis remained the support of surgery except for the OS of operable matched cohorts and the one matched cohort of age ≥75. However, the HR of OS showed a reduction from patients with unspecific age, ≥65 to ≥75 years old and histopathologically confirmed NSCLC to clinical NSCLC. Although cancer-specific survival and local control was superior after surgery, the recurrence rate of tumors, locoregional control, distant control, and regional control of matched patients demonstrated no significantly different outcomes between SBRT and surgery for early-stage NSCLC.Conclusions: Results show that surgery has superior OS, CSS and local control compared to SBRT for early-stage NSCLC. There is still necessary to explore the survival difference between SBRT and surgery for patients with different characteristics by large-sample, long-term follow-up randomized clinical studies.