High-dose versus conventional-dose irradiation in cisplatin-based definitive concurrent chemoradiotherapy for esophageal cancer: a systematic review and pooled analysis

We investigate whether high-dose (HD, >= 60 Gy) radiotherapy in definitive concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) based on cisplatin could yield benefits compared to conventional-dose (CD) CCRT. PubMed, Embase and Google Scholar were searched and data were pooled and analyzed for response rate, survival, failure patterns and toxicity. Results showed advantages in response rate, 5-year overall survival rate, local regional recurrence and distant failure rate compared to the CD arm with no difference in Grade >= 3 acute and late esophagitis, other toxicities were rare with moderate tolerance, subgroup analysis of squamous cell carcinoma also showed advantages for HD arm. We concluded that >= 60 Gy CCRT improved clinical outcomes compared to the CD arm, especially for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Our findings may provide a basis for future trials.