Assessing the Outcome of Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) Compared to Conventional External Beam Radiotherapy (cEBRT) in Spinal Metastases Patient, Does SBRT Result in Better Quality of Life? – Systematic Review

Introduction: Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) is an alternative radiation therapy to Conventional External Beam Radiotherapy (cEBRT), which can deliver high doses of radiation to the tumor site and minimize side effects to surrounding healthy tissue. This study aims to evaluate the different outcomes of SBRT and cEBRT for patients with spinal metastases. Materials and methods: A literature search was conducted by the PRISMA guideline using multiple electronic databases: PubMed, ScienceDirect, Sage Journal, CENTRAL, and Web of Science. All studies that fulfilled our PICO criteria were included in this study. Case series, case reports, and reviews were excluded from this review. Results: Studies with a high risk of bias and not assessing the radiotherapy outcome were also excluded. The RoB2 and ROBINS-I tools were used to analyze the quality of the selected studies. Basic data (sample size, sex, and average age of each group) and the outcome summary were tabulated. Based on the inclusion criteria, four literatures were selected for this study. Two out of three studies found that SBRT was more successful in reducing pain. Conclusion: SBRT showed better pain control, OS, progression-free survival (PFS), incidence rate, local failure rate, and adverse event (AE) than cEBRT, but no significant difference in the quality of life. Malaysian Journal of Medicine and Health Sciences (2024) 20(5): 264-269. doi:10.47836/mjmhs20.5.33