Can patients with low-risk prostate cancer really benefit from radical treatment?: A systematic review and network meta-analysis.

Radical prostatectomy, radiotherapy and active surveillance are three widely used treatment options for patients with low-risk prostate cancer, but the relative effects are controversial. We searched PubMed, Embase and Web of Science until June 2020, focusing on the studies comparing the effect of radical prostatectomy, radiotherapy and active surveillance in patients with low-risk prostate cancer. Through the random-effects model, dichotomous data were extracted and summarised by odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval. Twenty-two studies containing 185,363 participants were pooled for the comprehensive comparison. The Bayesian mixed network estimate demonstrated the cancer-specific mortality of radical prostatectomy was significantly lower than active surveillance (OR, 0.46; 95% CI 0.34-0.64) and external beam radiation therapy (OR, 0.66; 95% CI 0.46-0.96), but not brachytherapy (OR, 0.63; 95% CI 0.41-1.03). The brachytherapy demonstrated the best treatment ranking probability results in terms of all-cause mortality, while no significant difference was observed when compared with other three treatment modalities. Brachytherapy and radical prostatectomy were associated with a similar risk of cancer-specific mortality, and both of them were significantly superior to active surveillance and external beam radiation therapy; nevertheless, there was no significant difference among the aforementioned treatment methods in all-cause mortality.

A net-work meta-analysis of the cardiac safety for next-generation hormonal agents in treating castration-resistant prostate cancer: How to choose drugs appropriately?

BACKGROUND: Researchers have shown that using next-generation hormonal agents (NHA) for castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) would lead to increased risk of cardiac adverse effects, making clinician choices more complex. METHODS: We systematically searched Pubmed, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases for research published before October 2022. Agents were ranked according to their effectiveness based on cardiac adverse effects using the surface under the cumulative ranking curve. RESULTS: A total of 21 Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) with 19, 083 patients were included in present study. Our results showed that abiraterone and enzalutamide could lead to a significantly higher hypertension rate compared with placebo; whereas no significant difference was detected between four NHAs and placebo in ischemic heart disease incidence. All four NHAs could significantly increase the risk of cardiotoxicity. CONCLUSIONS: NHAs are generally acceptable in terms of cardiovascular disease compared to placebo in patients with CRPC.