Record Status This is a bibliographic record of a published health technology assessment from a member of INAHTA. No evaluation of the quality of this assessment has been made for the HTA database. Citation Maceira-Rozas MC, Lema-Varela L.. Braquiterapia de alta tasa en el tratamiento de tumores de lengua móvil. [High-dose rate brachytherapy in the treatment of mobile tongue cancer] Santiago de Compostela: Galician Agency for Health Technology Assessment (AVALIA-T). CT2014/04. 2014 Authors' objectives The main objective of this study was to assess the safety and effectiveness of HDRBT in the treatment of tumours of the mobile tongue. The main specific objectives were to assess the benefits in terms of safety, locoregional control, distant metastasis and survival with respect to other treatments. Authors' conclusions Results: The study encompassed a total of 15 publications that met our selection criteria. With the exception of one clinical trial, all the remaining (casecontrol and caseseries) studies were retrospective and thus reported
assessments of historical series of patients. The studies were conducted on patients with early stage T13N0 tumours of the tongue: in some instances, patients with stage T4 disease and positive ganglia involvement were included, mostly in studies with administration of external radiotherapy in addition to brachytherapy. In the majority of studies, patients treated with HDRBT registered toxicity rates that were higher than or similar to those obtained in the studies on low dose rate brachytherapy (LDRBT). Local control and survival were similar with both techniques. These results were reported by most of the studies, including the small sized clinical trial. Studies that administered brachytherapy jointly with external radiotherapy reported widely differing
outcomes.
Conclusions and recommendations:
Isolation of patients and irradiation of healthcare staff are both avoided with HDRBT, yet the evidence found is
nevertheless heterogeneous and of moderate low quality. Despite the fact that the general results on effectiveness proved similar for HDRBT and LDRBT, doubts surrounding safety make it impossible to establish general recommendations for use at the present time and its applications should be restricted to selected patient. Indexing Status Subject indexing assigned by CRD MeSH Adult; Brachytherapy; Disease-Free Survival; Dose Fractionation; Humans; Neoplasm Recurrence, Local; Radiotherapy Dosage; Safety; Tongue Neoplasms; Treatment Outcome Language Published Spanish Country of organisation Spain English summary An English language summary is available. Address for correspondence Galician Agency for Health Technology Assessment, Direccion Xeral Saude Publica e Planificacion, Conselleria de Sanidade, Xunta de Galicia, San Lazaro s/n 15781 Santiago de Compostela, Tel: +34 981 541831, Fax: +34 981 542854 Email: avalia-t@sergas.es AccessionNumber 32015000391 Date abstract record published 17/03/2015 |