PROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews High-dose chemotherapy followed by autologous haematopoietic cell transplantation for children, adolescents and young adults with first recurrence of Ewing sarcoma [Cochrane Protocol] Lianne Haveman, Willemijn Breunis, Elvira van Dalen, Leontien Kremer, Heribert Jürgens, Uta Dirksen, Henk van den Berg, Johannes Merks Citation Lianne Haveman, Willemijn Breunis, Elvira van Dalen, Leontien Kremer, Heribert Jürgens, Uta Dirksen, Henk van den Berg, Johannes Merks. High-dose chemotherapy followed by autologous haematopoietic cell transplantation for children, adolescents and young adults with first recurrence of Ewing sarcoma [Cochrane Protocol]. PROSPERO 2015:CRD42015022013 Available from http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero_rebranding/display_record.asp?id=crd42015022013 Review question(s) To assess the efficacy of HDC with AHCT versus standard-dose chemotherapy in improving event-free survival, overall survival, quality adjusted survival and progression-free survival of children, adolescents and young adults with first recurrence of ES and to determine the toxicity of the treatment. Searches All references to appendices are to those in the full protocol on the Cochrane Library. We will use the Cochrane Childhood Cancer Group's methods in the review (Module CCG). We will not apply any language restrictions. We will update the searches every two years. The Cochrane Childhood Cancer Review Group will run the searches in the Cochrane Central Library of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE and EMBASE; the review authors will run all other searches. Electronic searches We will search the following electronic databases: 1. CENTRAL (latest issue); 2. MEDLINE in PubMed (from 1966 to present); 3. EMBASE (Ovid; from 1980 to present). The search strategies for the different electronic databases (using a combination of controlled vocabulary and text words) are shown in Appendix 1; Appendix 2; and Appendix 3. Searching other resources We will locate information about trials not registered in CENTRAL, MEDLINE or EMBASE, either published or unpublished, by searching the reference lists of relevant articles and review articles. We also scan the conference proceedings of the International Society for Paediatric Oncology (SIOP; 2009 to 2013), the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology (ASPHO; 2009 to 2013), the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (ASBMT; 2009 to 2013), the European Society for Blood and Marrow (EBMT; 2009 to 2013), the Connective Tissue Oncology Society (CTOS; 2009 to 2013) and the European Musculo-Skeletal Oncology Society (EMSOS; 2009 to 2013); we will perform these searches electronically if available or by handsearching. We will scan ClinicalTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrials.gov) and the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (WHO ICTRP) (www.who.int/ictrp/en/) for ongoing trials. Types of study to be included Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) or (historical) controlled clinical trials (CCTs) comparing the effectiveness of HDC and AHCT with standard-dose chemotherapy for children, adolescents and young adults with recurrence of ES. Page: 1 / 5
Condition or domain being studied The Cochrane Childhood Cancer Group Participants/ population Children, adolescents and young adults (aged less than 30 years at the date of diagnostic biopsy) with an earlier diagnosis of ES confirmed by pathology and with a first relapse of the disease. We will exclude people who received HDC with AHCT in the primary treatment. We will include studies that also include people who are not eligible for inclusion in this review (e.g. people older than 30 years at tumour diagnosis), if data for only the eligible participants are available. Intervention(s), exposure(s) HDC with AHCT as part of second-line treatment versus conventional standard-dose chemotherapy. We will define HDC as chemotherapy that ablates the person's bone marrow reserves and creates an absolute requirement for stem cell rescue. We will define standard-dose chemotherapy as chemotherapy at a lower dose than HDC that does not require stem cell rescue. We will also include studies that add an immunotherapy to HDC with AHCT. Comparator(s)/ control Specified above. Outcome(s) Primary outcomes 1. Event-free survival (as defined by the authors of the original study). 2. Overall survival (as defined by the authors of the original study). 3. Toxicity of the treatment (as defined by the authors of the original study). 4. Quality-adjusted survival (as defined by the authors of the original study). Secondary outcomes 1. Progression-free survival (as defined by the authors of the original study). Data extraction, (selection and coding) Selection of studies After applying the search strategy, two review authors will independently identify studies meeting the inclusion criteria for this review. We will resolve discrepancies between authors by discussion. If we cannot reach consensus, we will achieve final resolution using a third-party arbitrator. We will obtain the complete article of any study that seems to meet the inclusion criteria in accordance with the title or the abstract, or both. We will produce a 'Characteristics of included studies' table and include detailed information for each study. We will clearly state details of the reasons for exclusion of any study considered for the review in the 'Characteristics of excluded studies' table. We will include a PRISMA flow diagram of the selection of studies in the review. If there are multiple reports of the same study, we will use the most recent report as the primary publication; we will check the other available reports for data not reported in the primary publication. Data extraction and management Two review authors will independently perform data extraction using standardised forms. We will resolve discrepancies between review authors by discussion. If we cannot reach consensus, we will achieve final resolution using a third party arbitrator. We will extract data on the characteristics of participants (e.g. age, gender and other known risk factors in participants (tumour volume, primary metastatic disease, time of relapse after primary diagnosis, type of relapse and sites of metastases, response to second-line therapy)), interventions, outcome measures, study design, length of follow-up, details of funding sources and declaration of interests for each included study. Risk of bias (quality) assessment Page: 2 / 5
Assessment of risk bias in included studies Two review authors will independently assess the risk of bias in included studies (i.e. selection bias, performance bias, detection bias (for each outcome separately), attrition bias (for each outcome separately), reporting bias and other bias). We will use the risk of bias items and definitions of low risk of bias, unclear risk of bias and high risk of bias as described in the module of the Childhood Cancer Group (Module CCG), which are based on the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Higgins 2011). We will resolve discrepancies between review authors by discussion. If we cannot reach consensus, we will achieve final resolution using a third-party arbitrator. We will take into account the risk of bias in included studies in the interpretation of the review's results. Strategy for data synthesis Data synthesis We will enter data into the Review Manager 5 software (RevMan 2012), as provided by The Cochrane Collaboration and undertake analyses according to the guidelines of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Higgins 2011). We will include outcome measures only if it was the intention of the study to perform the necessary assessments in all randomised participants (i.e. not only optional or only performed in some centres). When the results of a particular outcome measure are available for less than 50% of the participants of a study, due to the associated high risk of attrition bias, we will not report the results of this outcome measure. We will pool results only if both treatment groups are comparable, including the definition of outcomes used. We will provide a descriptive summary for studies for which pooling of results is not possible. We do not expect multi-arm studies (i.e. including more than two treatment groups); however, if we include these studies, we will take appropriate measures as described in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions ( Higgins 2011). We will analyse historical CCTs separately. We will analyse studies that compare immunotherapy plus HDC with a AHCT. For each comparison, we will prepare a 'Summary of findings' table using the GRADEprofiler software in which we plan to present the following outcomes: event-free survival, overall survival, progression-free survival, quality adjustes survival and toxicity of the treatment. Two review authors will independently assess the quality of the evidence using the five GRADE considerations (i.e. study limitations, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision and publication bias). Assessment of heterogeneity We will assess heterogeneity both by visual inspection of the forest plots and by a formal statistical test for heterogeneity (i.e. the I 2 statistic). In the absence of significant heterogeneity (I 2 less than 50%) (Higgins 2011), we will use a fixed-effect model for the estimation of treatment effects. Otherwise, we will explore possible reasons for the occurrence of heterogeneity and take appropriate measures, such as using a random-effects model. Assessment of reporting biases In addition to the evaluation of reporting bias as described in the Assessment of risk of bias in included studies section, we will assess reporting bias by constructing a funnel plot where there are a sufficient number of included studies (i.e. at least 10 studies included in a meta-analysis). When there are fewer studies, the power of the tests is too low to distinguish chance from real asymmetry (Higgins 2011). Sensitivity analysis For all outcomes for which pooling is possible, we will perform sensitivity analyses for all risk of bias criteria separately. We will exclude studies with a high risk of bias or unclear risk of bias and compare the results of studies with a low risk of bias with the results of all available studies. Analysis of subgroups or subsets We will not perform subgroup analyses. Dissemination plans This is a Cochrane review and will be published in full online in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), which is a core component of The Cochrane Library. Contact details for further information Page: 3 / 5
Lianne M Haveman l.m.haveman@amc.nl Organisational affiliation of the review The Cochrane Collaboration http://www.cochrane.org/ Review team Dr Lianne Haveman, Emma Children's Hospital/Academic Medical Center Miss Willemijn Breunis, Emma Children's Hospital/Academic Medical Center Dr Elvira van Dalen, Emma Children's Hospital/Academic Medical Center Dr Leontien Kremer, Emma Children's Hospital/Academic Medical Center Professor Heribert Jürgens, Universitätsklinikum Münster Professor Uta Dirksen, Universitätsklinikum Münster Dr Henk van den Berg, Emma Children's Hospital/Academic Medical Center Dr Johannes Merks, Emma Children's Hospital/Academic Medical Center Anticipated or actual start date 15 November 2014 Anticipated completion date 15 December 2016 Funding sources/sponsors Dutch Cochrane Centre, Stichting Kinderen Kankervrij (KiKa), Tom Voûte Fund Conflicts of interest None known Other registration details This is a protocol for a Cochrane review, full details are available on The Cochrane Library. Language English Country Netherlands Subject index terms status Subject indexing assigned by CRD Subject index terms Adolescent; Adult; Cell Transplantation; Child; Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation; Humans; Neoplasm Recurrence, Local; Neoplasms; Sarcoma, Ewing Stage of review Ongoing Date of registration in PROSPERO 02 June 2015 Date of publication of this revision 02 June 2015 Page: 4 / 5
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) DOI 10.15124/CRD42015022013 Stage of review at time of this submission Started Completed Preliminary searches Yes Yes Piloting of the study selection process Yes No Formal screening of search results against eligibility criteria No No Data extraction No No Risk of bias (quality) assessment No No Data analysis No No PROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews The information in this record has been provided by the named contact for this review. CRD has accepted this information in good faith and registered the review in PROSPERO. CRD bears no responsibility or liability for the content of this registration record, any associated files or external websites. Page: 5 / 5