title: Meta-analysis of the effect of postoperative radiotherapy on prognosis of prostatic cancer following radical prostatectomy.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  A systematic evaluation was carried out over the effectiveness and safety of postoperative radiotherapy following radical prostatectomy.
  
  
  METHODS
  The randomized controlled trials that were concerned with postoperative radiotherapy for prostatic cancer and published before June 2014 were searched in PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, CBM, CNKI and VIP databases. Two researchers conducted quality evaluation and data extraction independently for all included literature. Rev Man 5.2 software was used for statistical analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Finally 5 randomized control trials involving 2290 cases were included. Meta-analysis showed that the approaches of radical prostatectomy with or without postoperative radiotherapy did not differ significantly in terms of overall survival (HR=1.09, 95% C1: 0.75-1.60, P=0.65). However, significant difference was found in biochemical progression-free survival (HR=0.54, 95% CI: 0.42-0.69, P < 0.001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Evidences show that postoperative radiotherapy following radical prostatectomy can increase biochemical progression-free survival but not overall survival.
authors.affiliation: Department of Urology, Xinqiao Hospital, The Third Military Medical University Chongqing, 400038, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Urology, Xinqiao Hospital, The Third Military Medical University Chongqing, 400038, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Zhenqiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.affiliation: Department of Urology, Xinqiao Hospital, The Third Military Medical University Chongqing, 400038, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Chongxing
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.affiliation: Department of Urology, Xinqiao Hospital, The Third Military Medical University Chongqing, 400038, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Longkun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
keywords: Postoperative radiotherapy; meta-analysis; prognosis; prostatic cancer; radical prostatectomy