Comparison of Local Recurrence Rate of Three Treatment Modalities for Kimura Disease

Eosinophilic hyperplastic lymphogranuloma, also known as Kimura disease, is a benign and chronic inflammatory condition, predominantly involving the head and neck region. Surgical excision, radiotherapy (RA), surgical resection combined with low-dose postoperative radiotherapy and oral corticosteroids are 4 treatment modalities reported to control this disease effectively. Local recurrence, however, is common and the optimum treatment for Kimura disease is controversial. Thus, the present meta-analysis was performed to identify the treatment modality associated with the lowest local recurrence. Electronic databases (Cochrane Library, Wiley Online Library, PubMed, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang Data) were searched. Data were also obtained from other sources such as related references and communication with the relevant authors. Two reviewers screened the literature according to preselected criteria. All studies involving different treatments for Kimura disease were collected. After data extraction and research quality assessment, the meta-analysis of 22 studies involving 570 patients was conducted using STATA 12.1 software. Meta-analysis revealed that administration of RA or surgical excision alone were inferior in controlling local recurrence compared with surgical resection combined with postoperative RA (risk ratio (RR) = 2.72; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.47-5.04 and RR = 4.72; 95% CI, 2.53-8.82). Surgical excision alone did not show significant advantage in controlling local recurrence compared with RA alone (RR = 2.13; 95% CI, 0.88-5.17). Surgical resection combined with postoperative RA is superior to either surgery or RA alone in treating Kimura disease. More large scale prospective randomized controlled trials, however, should be conducted to assess the long-term effects and safety issues.