Evidence mapping based on systematic reviews of therapeutic interventions for gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST)

Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumours (GISTs) are the most common mesenchymal tumours. Currently, different pharmacological and surgical options are used to treat localised and metastatic GISTs, although this research field is broad and the body of evidence is scattered and expanding. Our objectives are to identify, describe and organise the current available evidence for GIST through an evidence mapping approach.

We followed the methodology of Global Evidence Mapping (GEM). We searched Pubmed, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library and Epistemonikos in order to identify systematic reviews (SRs) with or without meta-analyses published between 1990 and March 2016. Two authors assessed eligibility and extracted data. Methodological quality of the included systematic reviews was assessed using AMSTAR. We organised the results according to identified PICO questions and presented the evidence map in tables and a bubble plot.

A total of 17 SRs met eligibility criteria. These reviews included 66 individual studies, of which three quarters were either observational or uncontrolled clinical trials. Overall, the quality of the included SRs was moderate or high. In total, we extracted 14 PICO questions from them and the corresponding results mostly favoured the intervention arm.

The most common type of study used to evaluate therapeutic interventions in GIST sarcomas has been non-experimental studies. However, the majority of the interventions are reported as beneficial or probably beneficial by the respective authors of SRs. The evidence mapping is a useful and reliable methodology to identify and present the existing evidence about therapeutic interventions.