Continuous versus intermittent chemotherapy strategies in metastatic colorectal cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background An important goal of intermittent strategies of delivering systemic treatment as first-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) is to maintain efficacy while improving patients' quality of life (QoL). Given the varying impact on efficacy demonstrated in individual randomized, controlled trials (RCTs), a systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs of these intermittent strategies was carried out. Design Relevant databases were systematically searched for the period 2000-2014. RCTs that compared a continuous versus intermittent strategy of delivering systemic treatment were identified by a systematic review. Overall survival (OS) hazard ratios (HRs) were extracted from the most recently reported trial results. The results of identified trials were clinically homogeneous so the data were pooled using Review Manager software (RevMan 5.1). Results…