Diagnostic Value of Endoscopic Ultrasound after Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy for Gastric Cancer Restaging: A Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Test

This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic value of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) after neoadjuvant therapy (NT) for gastric cancer restaging by meta-analysis. We conducted a systematic search of studies published on PubMed and Web of Science up to 30th August 2021. Assessing the risk of bias in the included studies was done with the QUADAS-2 tool. We used R and Review Manager 5.4.1 for calculations and statistical analysis. To evaluate the diagnostic value of EUS after NT for gastric cancer restaging, we performed a meta-analysis on six studies, with a total of 283 patients, including true-positive, true-negative, false-positive, and false-negative results for T1-T4, N0. EUS as a diagnostic test for GC patients after chemotherapy has a relatively low DOR for the T2 (3.96) and T4 stages (4.79) and a relatively high partial AUC for the T2 (0.85) and T4 (0.71) stages. Our results reveal that the pooled sensitivity for T stages after chemotherapy is rather low (29–56%), except for the T3 stage (71%). A potential limitation of our study was the small number of included studies, but no significant heterogeneity was found between them. Our meta-analysis concludes that EUS is not recommended or is still under debate for GC restaging after NT

Dendritic cell immunotherapy versus bevacizumab plus irinotecan in recurrent malignant glioma patients: a survival gain analysis

Stefan-Alexandru Artene,1 Adina Turcu-Stiolica,2 Richard Hartley,1 Marius Eugen Ciurea,3 Oana Daianu,1 Corina Brindusa,1 Oana Alexandru,4 Ligia Gabriela Tataranu,5 Stefana Oana Purcaru,1 Anica Dricu1 1Unit of Biochemistry, 2Department of Biostatistics, 3Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 4Department of Neurology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Craiova, Craiova, 5Department of Neurosurgery, “Bagdasar–Arseni” Emergency Hospital, Bucharest, Romania Background: The bevacizumab and irinotecan protocol is considered a standard treatment regimen for recurrent malignant glioma. Recent advances in immunotherapy have hinted that vaccination with dendritic cells could become an alternative salvage therapy for the treatment of recurrent malignant glioma.Methods: A search was performed on PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Embase in order to identify studies with patients receiving bevacizumab plus irinotecan or dendritic cell therapy for recurrent malignant gliomas. The data obtained from these studies were used to perform a systematic review and survival gain analysis.Results: Fourteen clinical studies with patients receiving either bevacizumab plus irinotecan or dendritic cell vaccination were identified. Seven studies followed patients that received bevacizumab plus irinotecan (302 patients) and seven studies included patients that received dendritic cell immunotherapy (80 patients). For the patients who received bevacizumab plus irinotecan, the mean reported median overall survival was 7.5 (95% confidence interval [CI] 4.84–10.16) months. For the patients who received dendritic cell immunotherapy, the mean reported median overall survival was 17.9 (95% CI 11.34–24.46) months. For irinotecan + bevacizumab group, the mean survival gain was -0.02±2.00, while that for the dendritic cell immunotherapy group was -0.01±4.54.Conclusion: For patients with recurrent malignant gliomas, dendritic cell immunotherapy treatment does not have a significantly different effect when compared with bevacizumab and irinotecan in terms of survival gain (P=0.535) and does not improve weighted survival gain (P=0.620). Keywords: malignant glioma, irinotecan, bevacizumab, dendritic cell, systematic analysi