Adjuvant Chemoradiotherapy is Associated with Improved Survival for Patients with Resected Gallbladder Carcinoma: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background The impact of adjuvant radiotherapy (ART) on survival from gallbladder carcinoma (GBC) remains underexplored, with conflicting results reported. A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to clarify the impact of ART in GBC. Methods A systematic literature search of several databases was performed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, from inception to August 2016. Studies that reported survival outcomes for patients with or without ART after curative surgery were included. Results All the inclusion criteria was met by 14 retrospective studies including 9364 analyzable patients, but most of the studies had a moderate risk of bias. Generally, the ART group had more patients with unfavorable characteristics than the group that had surgery alone. Nevertheless, the pooled results showed that ART significantly reduced the risk of death (hazard ratio [HR], 0.54; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.44–0.67; p