Response to “A meta-analysis comparing higher and lower dose radiotherapy for palliation in locally advanced lung cancer”

Dear Editor,We have read the Letter to the Editor by Vlayen et al. carefully. We apologize for the wrongly extracted data in our meta-analysis.¹ The 1-year overall survival (OS) rate in the Dutch trial by Kramer et al.² was 19.6% for the high-dose group and 10.9% for the low-dose group. We have redone the statistical analysis. The below paragraph shows the corrected results and our conclusion was also revised as: “This meta-analysis indicates that high-dose (≥30 Gy) radiotherapy provides higher 1-year OS rate than low-dose (<30 Gy) radiotherapy in patients with locally advanced lung cancer; however, the symptom palliation and 2-year OS are similar between high-dose and low-dose radiotherapy.”

Overall survival rate

The forest plot of the meta-analysis for the 1-year OS rate is presented in Fig.1. After pooling of the data, no significant heterogeneity among the studies was found (Q = 3.07, d.f. = 4, P = 0.547; I² = 0.0%); therefore, a fixed-effects model was used for the meta-analysis of the 1-year OS rate. The combined odd ratios (ORs) revealed significant difference in 1-year OS between patients treated with a higher radiotherapy dose compared to those treated with a lower dose. Among the five studies, ORs ranged from 1.04 to 1.99, with the combined OR = 1.28 (95% confidence interval, 1.03–1.60; P = 0.029; Fig.1).

Figure 1.

Forest plots of the meta-analysis comparing higher dose ( ≥ 30 Gy) versus lower dose ( < 30 Gy) radiotherapy for 1-year overall survival (OS) in locally advanced lung cancer.

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.