Comparative effectiveness of different consolidation chemotherapy regimens for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia: A protocol for systematic review and network meta analysis

BACKGROUND: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is one of the most commonly seen cancers in children, which mainly relates with inherited genetic variations. Consolidation chemotherapy is usually given to the pediatric ALL patients, however there is no meta-analysis and network analysis conducting the efficacy of the chemotherapy. Therefore, we perform a protocol to assess the efficacy of chemotherapeutics for pediatric ALL. METHODS: A literature search for randomized controlled trials about some specific chemotherapy regimens for pediatric ALL will be carried out in 7 electronic databases from their establishment to June 2019: the Cochrane Library, Embase, MEDLINE, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the Sino Med, the Chinese Scientific Journal Database (VIP) and the Wanfang Database. Complete continuous remission will be measured as primary outcome. Stata 14.0 will be utilized to perform a standard pairwise meta-analysis and the NMA, as well as draw Network Plots of Network Meta. RESULTS: This network meta-analysis will evaluate the efficacy of different consolidation chemotherapy regimens. CONCLUSION: This study will furnish decision-making reference on optimum proposal of chemotherapy regimens for pediatric ALL. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: PROSPERO CRD42019134518