Clinical Efficacy and Adverse Reactions of Bevacizumab plus Radiochemotherapy in the Treatment of Advanced Gastric Cancer

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical efficacy and adverse reactions of bevacizumab plus radiochemotherapy in the treatment of advanced gastric cancer. METHODS: Eighty-six eligible patients with gastric cancer treated in our institution from August 2019 to August 2020 were recruited and concurrently randomly assigned via the random number table method at a 1 : 1 ratio to receive neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy (control group) or bevacizumab (given on the first day of each course of neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy) plus neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy (study group) for 9 weeks (3 weeks as one course). Outcomes include the clinical efficacy and serum tumor marker levels before and after treatment. Patients in both groups were followed up for 12 months after treatment to obtain progression-free survival (PFS). Assessment of patients' quality of survival was done by the Karnofsky performance score (KPS). The occurrence of adverse reactions in patients during treatment was monitored to evaluate the safety of the treatment protocol. RESULTS: The research group outperformed the control group significantly in terms of total treatment efficiency (P < 0.05). After treatment, serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and glycoantigen 199 (CA199) levels were markedly reduced in both groups, with lower results observed in the research group (P < 0.05). The research group had a significantly longer median PFS than the control group (95% CI: 1.182–2.367, 1.132–2.469, P < 0.05). A significantly higher improvement in quality of survival was observed in the research group than in the control group (P < 0.05). No significant intergroup differences in adverse reactions were reported, and no new safety signals were identified (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: Bevacizumab potentiates the treatment outcomes for advanced gastric cancer by effectively attenuating the abnormalities of serum tumor marker levels and prolonging survival, with a high safety profile, in combination with radiochemotherapy versus radiochemotherapy alone.