A Meta-analysis of orbital irradiation in treatment of Graves ophthalmopathy

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the efficacy of orbital irradiation in the treatment of Graves ophthalmopathy. Methods Through computer searching The Cochrane Library,PubMed,EMbase,CBM,CKNI,VIP and Wanfang with a cut-off date in March 2011,and hand searching relevant journals,the randomized controlled trails (RCTs) assessing the effect of orbital irradiation on Graves ophthalmopathy were collected.Quality assessment and date extraction were performed in those clinical trials in lined with the inclusion criteria.Then,RevMan5.0 software was applied to carry out meta-analysis. Results Five relevant studies with 289 patients were included.The meta-analysis showed that:Two of them found orbital irradiation to be significantly more effective than sham irradiation;2 of them found orbital irradiation to be equally effective as oral glucocorticoid; 2 of them found the effect of orbital irradiation on proptosis was insignificant.The pooled OR,pooled OR and pooled mean difference were 0.32 [0.16,0.64],0.89 [0.40,1.94] and -0.30 [-0.69,0.10] respectively.Conclusions This Meta-analysis demonstrates that orbital irradiation can effectively improve the overall response rate of the treatment of Graves ophthalmopathy,and it is equally effective as oral glucocorticoid. Key words: Orbital irradiation; Graves ophthalmopathy; Meta-analysis; Systematic review