Indirect comparison of the efficacy of cetuximab and cisplatin in squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck

BACKGROUND: Cetuximab (Erbitux*) is the only new medical therapy for locally and regionally advanced SCCHN to be licensed in industrialized countries in the past 15 years and presents an alternative to cisplatin which is the current therapeutic standard. In the absence of a published head-to-head trial, we estimated the relative benefit of cetuximab and cisplatin using an indirect comparison methodology. METHODS: We performed a systematic …