{"doi":"10.1158/1078-0432.ccr-04-1870","title":"Prognostic Significance of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Immunohistochemical Expression in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Meta-Analysis","abstract":"<h4>Purpose</h4>Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is considered as a prime mediator of angiogenesis. Various studies examining the relationship between VEGF protein overexpression with the clinical outcome in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma have yielded inconclusive results.<h4>Experimental design</h4>We conducted a meta-analysis of 12 studies (n = 1.002 patients) that evaluated the correlation between VEGF (detected by immunohistochemistry) and 2-year overall survival. The relation between VEGF and lymph node involvement (11 studies, n = 722) was also examined. Data were synthesized with random effect and fixed effect risk ratios.<h4>Results</h4>The estimated risk of death in 2 years was 1.88-fold higher in the VEGF-positive patients [95% confidence interval, 1.43-2.45; P < 0.001 random effect calculations]. Between-study heterogeneity was nonsignificant (P = 0.15) but larger studies tended to provide more conservative estimates (P = 0.097). VEGF overexpression was not significantly associated with the presence of lymph node metastasis (risk ratio, 1.20; 95% confidence interval, 0.97-1.49; P = 0.087) and there was significant between-study heterogeneity (P = 0.08).<h4>Conclusions</h4>Although some modest bias cannot be excluded, VEGF positivity seems to be associated with worse overall survival in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.","journal":"Clinical Cancer Research","year":2005,"id":3422,"datarank":0.8264082504941967,"base_score":5.5093883366279774,"endowment":5.5093883366279774,"self_citation_contribution":0.8264082504941967,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.8264082504941967,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":246,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.0349,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2005-02-15","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":35968,"name":"Isabella W. Cunha","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":19189,"name":"P. Kyzas","orcid":"0000-0003-1034-9145","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":19188,"name":"Panayiotis A. Kyzas","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":54,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}