Concomitant chemoradiotherapy (with cisplatin or carboplatin) is an option of definitive treatment for squamous head and neck cancer. We aimed to perform a meta-analysis comparing those two platinum agents.

We carried out a systematic search on English literature between 1990 and 17 April 2015 according to the Cochrane review guidelines.

Five of 60 studies fulfilled inclusion criteria with 491 patients. There was no difference in response rate. Cisplatin tends to be more active systemically than carboplatin, without statistically significance; 5-year survival rate: 30 and 27%, respectively (p = 0.33).

Despite the trend to improved outcomes in using cisplatin, carboplatin is also active and can be a reasonable option to treat patients.