Efficacy and Safety of Proton Therapy for Medulloblastoma Patients: A Mata-Analysis

Background: Currently, photon therapy is mainly used for radiotherapy, however, the long-term side effects of photon therapy are sometimes reported, especially in children, including cognitive decline, mental decline, growth retardation, endocrine dysfunction and secondary tumor.Compared with photon radiotherapy, proton therapy is a novel method of radiation therapy, which reduces acute and late radiation damage and improves patients’ quality of life. Therefore, we evaluated proton therapy on medulloblastoma patients by meta-analysis in this study. Materials and Methods: A clinical randomized controlled trial was conducted by retrieving the main databases PubMed (Medline), EMbase, Cochrane Library, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), Chinese Zhi-wang (CNKI), Wanfang Database, and VIP Database. We analyzed the literature which matched the quality criteria for the prognostic impact of proton and photon therapy on medulloblastoma patients. Results: Ten articles were included in this study. The overall survival (OS) rate and side effects were comprehensively analyzed. The results showed that proton radiotherapy significantly reduced the side effects and recurrence rate of tumor. Conclusion: Proton therapy could significantly reduce the side effects and recurrence rate of medulloblastoma in patients.