Advanced stage colorectal cancer therapy shows positive progress by increasing overall survival (OS). Mainstay treatment still uses cytotoxic agents and oxaliplatin which results in an average survival of 18 months when combined with 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) or capecitabine. This study aims to determine the effectiveness and safety of the use of FOLFOX and XELOX chemotherapy in advanced stage colorectal cancer patients using a meta-analysis study.
This is a meta-analysis study comparing only the Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) study using FOLFOX and XELOX chemotherapy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer taken from PubMed, EMBASE and The Cochrane Library using keywords: Capecitabine, FOLFOX, XELOX and metastatic colorectal.
9 journals were included in the inclusion criteria and were followed by a meta-analysis study. A total of 5,873 patients were obtained with the number of groups given FOLFOX of 3,034 and 2,839 in the group given XELOX. The analysis doesn’t show evidence of publication bias in the forest plot. The results of the analysis of Progress Free Survival (PFS) found no significant heterogeneity (OR = 1.09, 95% CI: 0.97-1.23, p = 0.14), the Overall Survival (OS) analysis also did not obtain heterogeneity (OR = 0.98, 95% CI : 0.87-1.10, p = 0.77). Overall Response Rate (ORR) there were no significant differences in the two groups. All studies gave grade 3 and 4 toxicity. The results of the combined analysis showed thrombocytopenia, Hand Foot Syndrome (HFS) and diarrhea in the XELOX group were significantly higher.
The effectiveness of XELOX and FOLFOX found no significant differences. However, the safety of the XELOX group showed significantly more side effects. Keywords: FOLFOX, XELOX, Advanced Stage Colorectal Cancer.
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