AUTHOR=Xu Guoxiong , Jin Yiqi , Fang Changwen , Yu Jingfan , Zhang Zhixuan , Sun Chunrong 

TITLE=Is Radical Surgery Alone Enough in T1-3N1a Colon Cancer?

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Oncology

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2020.01679

DOI=10.3389/fonc.2020.01679

ISSN=2234-943X

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> Low lymphatic tumor burden is associated with a better prognosis. However, it is uncertain whether those patients diagnosed as cN0 found to be pN+ could be a favorable subgroup in stage III disease. Radical surgery alone might avoid overtreatment in those patients.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> Eligible patients diagnosed with colon cancer without metastasis were recruited from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database from 2004 to 2016 using SEER<sup>*</sup>Stat 8.3.5 software (Surveillance Research Program, National Cancer Institute) and divided into two groups: surgery group (<italic>n</italic> = 3,081) and surgery followed by adjuvant chemotherapy group (<italic>n</italic> = 4,591). Overall survival (OS) and cause-specific survival (CSS) differences were assessed by Kaplan–Meier analysis, and survival differences were estimated with log-rank tests. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard regressions were used to assess hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for colon cancer patients.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> A total of 7,672 pT1-3N1a colon cancer patients were recruited from 208,751 colon cancer patients. The 5-year CSS rates of patients without and with adjuvant chemotherapy were 80.0 and 90.7%, respectively. The receipt of adjuvant chemotherapy after the radical resection of the primary tumor was independently associated with 57.3% decreased risk of colon cancer-specific mortality compared with surgery alone (HR = 0.427, 95% CI = 0.370–0.492, <italic>P</italic> &lt; 0.001, using surgery alone as the reference).</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> Adjuvant chemotherapy was significantly associated with improved prognosis and radical surgery alone did not provide enough treatment for colon cancer with very low lymphatic tumor burden.</p>