The Safety and Efficacy of Intra-Arterial versus Intravenous Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Patients with Locally Advanced Cervical Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Objective . The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of intra‐arterial versus intravenous neoadjuvant chemotherapy for the management of patients with locally advanced cervical cancer. Methods . The PubMed, EMBASE, PMC, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases were searched to identify correlational studies published in English. Prospective controlled studies that evaluated the treatment effect of intra‐arterial neoadjuvant chemotherapy or intravenous neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer were pooled for a meta‐analysis. Results . A total of three eligible studies with 112 patients with locally advanced cervical cancer were eventually included in this analysis. The baseline regimen of neoadjuvant chemotherapy was platinum‐based chemotherapy. The total clinical response rate was 71.4%, and the overall pathological complete response (CR) rate was 11.5%. The grade 3/4 toxicity rate was 27.2%. In the intra‐arterial group, the response rate was 83.1% (CR, 22.0%; partial response (PR), 61.0%), which was significantly higher than 58.5% (CR, 11.3%; PR, 47.2%) in the intravenous group ( P = 0.01). The pathological CR rate was 15.5% in the intra‐arterial group, which was higher than 6.5% in the intravenous group. The grade 3/4 toxicity rate was 17.2% in the intra‐arterial group, which was higher than the rate of 13.8% in the intravenous group. Conclusion . Platinum‐based neoadjuvant chemotherapy was well tolerated in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer and showed moderate response activity. Compared to intravenous neoadjuvant chemotherapy, intra‐arterial neoadjuvant chemotherapy had an evident advantage in terms of the clinical response while maintaining a similar toxicity rate. The clinical efficacy of intra‐arterial neoadjuvant chemotherapy deserves further evaluation.