Surgery and stereotactic body radiotherapy for early stage non-small cell lung cancer: review of meta-analyses

Observational or randomized studies on survival outcome following surgery versus stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) demonstrated various results, and several meta-analyses on this topic have been published. The PubMed database was queried for meta-analyses comparing surgery and SBRT for early stage NSCLC. Six meta-analyses on this comparison were identified and 4 (66.7%) suggested that surgery be associated with significantly more favorable overall survival than SBRT, using odds ratio or hazard ratio (HR) as measures of effect. Most of the included studies in the meta-analyses were observational studies and those meta-analyses should be interpreted with caution.