[A Systematic Review of Erlotinib for Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer.].

Background: It was unclear whether advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients could benefit from erlotinib therapy. This study was aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of NSCLC patients treated with erlotinib.

Methods: The relevant randomized controlled trials (RCT) were searched from VIP, CMB, CNKI, PubMed, EMBASE and The Cochrane Library. The related references and experts in this field were traced, and other authors were communicated with to obtain the information that has not been found. Quality assessment of qualified RCTs assessed by the exclusion and inclusion criteria and RevMan 5.0 provided by the Cochrane Collaboration was used to perform meta-analysis.

Results: Three RCTs involving 2 969 patients were included. Meta analysis results suggested that erlotinib was superior to placebo for one year survival rate (OR=1.18, 95%CI: 1.01-1.38), tumor response rate (OR=1.24, 95%CI: 1.03-1.49), median overall survival, median progression-free survival and tumor responses duration. At the same time, the incidence of grade 3-4 skin rash (OR=16.33, 95%CI: 7.01-38.02) and diarrhea (OR=5.02, 95%CI: 2.93-8.60) of the adverse reactions was increased.

Conclusions: Advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients could benefit from Erlotinib therapy, but the incidence of skin rash and diarrhea was significantly increased, and in the absence of damage to the blood system, serious liver and kidney damage, cardiac toxicity, etc, there were no difference with placebo.