Sensitivity analysis and subgroups analyses.

a, Ineligible cases reported in original articles were excluded b, Q statistic p-value c, Omission of five studies[11,57,45,58,49] to which significant heterogeneity could be attributed mainly in accordance with sensitivity analysis d, Omission of one study[14] to which significant heterogeneity could be attributed mainly in accordance with sensitivity analysis e, One study [29] that contained retrospective research and prospective research, was counted twice g: If the cutoff value was unavailable in a study, it was omitted in the meta-analysis. OS, overall survival; DSS, disease-specific survival; DFS, disease-free survival; NA, not available; HR, hazard ratio; CI, confidence interval. Sensitivity analysis and subgroups analyses.