Survival outcomes of radiofrequency ablation compared with surgery in patients with early-stage primary non-small-cell lung cancer: A meta-analysis

This study compared the overall survival (OS) of patients with early-stage primary non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with radiofrequency ablation (RFA) versus surgery.A systematic search was performed in MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Central Register, and all available Chinese databases to identify relevant publications from inception to April 2019. This meta-analysis compared hazard ratios (HRs) for OS. A multivariate fixed effects model was used to perform a meta-analysis to compare survival between treatments.Six retrospective studies were included in the quantitative synthesis. Compared with surgery, RFA was associated with a similar long-term OS. The HRs and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for 2-, 3- and 5-year OS were 1.74 [0.82, 3.71], 1.15 [0.65, 2.02] and 2.69 [0.41, 17.47], respectively, while those of the pooled data were 1.47 [0.94, 2.32] in patients with early-stage primary NSCLC.RFA did not differ significantly from surgery in terms of the 5-year OS in patients with early-stage primary NSCLC. Randomized, controlled clinical trials are warranted to compare these two treatments.