ArticleHealthcare (Basel, Switzerland)2024
Effects of Immunotherapy on Quality-of-Life Outcomes in Patients with Gastroesophageal Cancers: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.
Article in Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- PD-L1-stratified health-related quality of life in solid tumors: pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy-a narrative review.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Review
- A Canadian algorithm for upper gastrointestinal cancer management.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundImmune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer care, with increasing data demonstrating improved survival outcomes using ICIs among patients with advanced gastroesophageal cancer (GEC). ICIs are also associated with a lower incidence of grade ≥ 3 adverse events (AEs) compared to chemotherapy, suggesting that ICIs may have favorable effects on health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This meta-analysis sought to evaluate the effects of ICIs on the HRQoL of patients with advanced GEC.
methodsWe conducted an online bibliographic search on Medline via PubMed using MeSH-based terms to retrieve randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated the effects of ICIs on HRQoL in patients with advanced GEC (we searched for all studies between 2018 and 2021). We included RCTs that incorporated ICIs as part of the intervention arm either as monotherapy (first or second line) or as a combination therapy (first-line) with another ICI or chemotherapy. We combined the HRQoL measures into a meta-analysis using standard random effects models, from which estimates of the average mean difference (MD) were obtained with 95% confidence intervals. We assessed the heterogeneity of the study outcomes using the Q and I
resultsWe identified 11 phase 3 RCTs that met the inclusion criteria, with a mean enrollment of 820 patients. Eight RCTs used an ICI plus chemotherapy combination in the intervention arm, three had ICIs as monotherapy, and one had doublet ICI therapy in the intervention arm. All RCTs used chemotherapy for the control arm. Collectively, the trials reported 37 HRQoL measures using five different HRQoL tools. The pooled analysis favored the intervention over the control arm in terms of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Esophageal (FACT-E) scores [MD 2.7 (95% CI 0.1 to 5.3),
conclusionsIn this meta-analysis, we found that the inclusion of ICIs as a first-line treatment for advanced GEC yielded better HRQoL outcomes than chemotherapy alone. Further research on the impact of ICIs on HRQoL is needed, with increasing evidence that ICIs improve the survival outcomes in patients with advanced GEC.
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