A network meta-analysis of the treatments for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in terms of survival.

We aimed to compare treatments for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in terms of survival. Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, the Cochrane Library and Embase were searched. Randomized controlled trials (RCT) that had compared esophageal SCC treatments were included. The hazard ratio (HR) with 95% credible interval (CrI) was used to summarize the effect measures in the Bayesian network meta-analysis. Out of 23,256 references, 43 RCTs with 34 treatments were included. Carboplatin and paclitaxel plus radiotherapy plus surgery (carbo-pacli + RT + S) compared with surgery alone decreased risk of death (HR = 0.49; 95% CrI: 0.26, 0.90). The HRs for carbo-pacli + RT + S versus surgery plus cisplatin and fluorouracil and surgery plus cisplatin and vindesine were 0.44 (0.22, 0.86) and 0.41 (0.20, 0.83), respectively. Among all treatments in network, carbo-pacli + RT + S ranked as first treatment. It seems carbo-pacli + RT + S was a better treatment among available treatments in network in terms of survival in patients with esophageal SCC.