Meta-analysis of the effect of postoperative radiotherapy on prognosis of prostatic cancer following radical prostatectomy

Objective: A systematic evaluation was carried out over the effectiveness and safety of postoperative radiotherapy following radical prostatectomy. Method: The randomized controlled trials that were concerned with postoperative radiotherapy for prostatic cancer and published before June 2014 were searched in PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, CBM, CNKI and VIP databases. Two researchers conducted quality evaluation and data extraction independently for all included literature. Rev Man 5.2 software was used for statistical analysis. Results: Finally 5 randomized control trials involving 2290 cases were included. Meta-analysis showed that the approaches of radical prostatectomy with or without postoperative radiotherapy did not differ significantly in terms of overall survival (HR= 1.09, 95% C1: 0.75-1.60, P= 0.65). However, significant difference was found in biochemical progression-free survival (HR= 0.54, 95% CI: 0.42-0.69, P < 0.001). Conclusion: Evidences show that postoperative radiotherapy following radical prostatectomy can increase biochemical progression-free survival but not overall survival.