In addition, 16 studies referring to the relationship between caspase-3 expression and clinicopathological features were included to investigate caspase-3 function, and our pooled results found no evidence that increased caspase-3 was correlated with the lymph nodes metastases (–/+), tumor differentiation grade (low/moderate or high) or tumor TNM stage. Here, CASP3 is linked to neoplasm.