Division of Hematology and Oncology, Departments of 1 Medicine, 2 Radiation Oncology, 3 Surgery and 4 Diagnostic Pathology, 5 Cancer Center, Samsung Medical Center, Sunkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea; 6 The Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning International, Inc., Wichita, KS, USA
Received 19 February 2003; revised 16 April 2003; accepted 14 May 2003
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Abstract |
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We report the results of postoperative chemoradiotherapy after curative resection in gastric cancer patients.
Patients and methods:
Patients with gastric cancer staged IB to IV(M0) were treated with chemoradiotherapy after curative resection with extensive (D2) lymph node dissection. Nodal metastases were observed in 261 (90%) patients. The chemotherapy consisted of fluorouracil 400 mg/m2 plus leucovorin 20 mg/m2 for 5 days, followed by 4500 cGy of radiotherapy for 5 weeks with fluorouracil and leucovorin on the first 4 days and the last 3 days of radiotherapy. Two 5-day cycles of chemotherapy were given 4 weeks after the completion of radiotherapy.
Results:
Of 290 patients accrued, 229 (79%) patients completed chemoradiotherapy as planned. With a median follow-up of 49 months, 114 (34%) patients have relapsed: 33 (29%) locoregional relapses, 76 (67%) peritoneal relapses and 41 (36%) distant metastases. The 5-year overall and relapse-free survivals were 60% and 57%, respectively. Tolerance was acceptable, the main toxicity being neutropenia.
Conclusions:
This postoperative chemoradiotherapy after curative resection of gastric cancer was feasible, with acceptable toxicities. Whether this adjuvant therapy in gastric cancer patients that have undergone a D2 lymph node dissection impacts on survival or reduces the incidence of relapses remains to be studied.
Key words: adenocarcinoma, chemoradiotherapy, gastric, postoperative
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Introduction |
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Complete surgical resection is the only potentially curative therapy available to patients with gastric cancer. However, even after a complete resection with negative margins, many patients will experience recurrence, and in general only palliative therapy is possible, reflecting the fact that most cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage [3].
The high rate of recurrence after curative resection makes it important to consider postoperative adjuvant therapy for patients with gastric cancer. However, most previous adjuvant trials have failed to show significant survival advantage in gastric cancer [4, 5]. Although there is no prospective study comparing postoperative chemotherapy and surgery alone in patients with gastric cancer in Korea, postoperative chemotherapy has been frequently given based on the evidence of survival benefit compared with historical control data [6].
The aim of this study was to evaluate the possible benefit of postoperative adjuvant chemoradiotherapy after curative resection in gastric cancer patients. We assessed overall and relapse-free survival, incidence and patterns of relapse, as well as the toxic effects.
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Patients and methods |
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Surgery
The surgical requirement for eligibility was resection with curative intent and en bloc resection of the tumor with negative margins. All patients had undergone extensive (D2) lymph node dissection. This procedure entails the resection of all perigastric nodes and some celiac, splenic or splenic-hilar, hepatic artery, and cardial lymph nodes, depending on the location of the tumor [9].
Chemoradiotherapy
Therapy was administered on an outpatient basis. The regimen of fluorouracil and leucovorin was developed by the North Central Cancer Treatment Group [10] and was administered before and after radiation. Chemotherapy for 5 days with fluorouracil 400 mg/m2/day and leucovorin 20 mg/m2/day was administered on day 1 and was followed by chemoradiotherapy beginning 4 weeks after the start of the initial cycle of chemotherapy. Chemoradiotherapy consisted of 4500 cGy of radiation at 180 cGy/day, 5 days/week for 5 weeks, with fluorouracil and leucovorin on the first 4 days and the last 3 days of radiotherapy. Four weeks after the completion of radiotherapy, two 5-day cycles of chemotherapy were given 4 weeks apart. Planned total doses of leucovorin and fluorouracil were 440 mg/m2 and 8800 mg/m2, respectively. The dose of leucovorin was kept constant, and the dose of fluorouracil was reduced according to toxicity.
The 4500 cGy of radiation was delivered in 25 fractions to the tumor bed, to the regional nodes, and 2 cm beyond the proximal and distal margins of resection. The tumor bed was defined by preoperative imaging. We used the definition of the Japanese Research Society for Gastric Cancer for the delineation of the regional lymph node areas [9, 11]. This regimen of chemoradiotherapy was shown to be tolerable in a previous trial [12].
Patient evaluation
We followed up patients at 3-month intervals for 1 year, at 6-month intervals for the next 2 years and yearly thereafter. Follow-up consisted of physical examination, a complete blood count, liver function tests, chest radiography, abdominopelvic computed tomography, and gastroscopy as clinically indicated. During the follow-up period, any suspected relapse was confirmed by biopsy, if possible. Typical nodules in liver or lung with imaging studies and typical lesions in the radioisotope bone scan and plain X-ray were accepted as relapse without histological confirmation. The site and date of the first relapse and the date of death, if the patient died, were recorded.
The site of relapse was classified as follows: the relapse was coded as locoregional if the tumor was detected within the radiation fields (including surgical anastomosis, remnant stomach or gastric bed); as peritoneal if the tumor was detected in the peritoneal cavity; and as distant if there was liver meta-stasis or the metastases were outside the peritoneal cavity.
Statistical considerations
Initially, we designed this study as a prospective randomized study comparing postoperative chemoradiotherapy with surgery alone. However, we were failing to accrue patients on the control group because most patients wanted to receive postoperative therapy, thus we had to change the design to a single-arm study.
Two important outcome measures in this study were overall and relapse-free survival rates. Relapse-free survival was defined as the time from surgery to the recurrence of cancer, occurrence of a second primary carcinoma, or death without evidence of recurrence or second primary. The KaplanMeier product-limit method was used to estimate survival rates. To assess the importance of potential prognostic factors, we performed univariate and multivariate analyses using log-rank test and Coxs proportional hazards regression model. A P value <0.05 was considered significant. All analyses were performed using SPSS for Windows 10.0 software.
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Results |
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Discussion |
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Meta-analyses of randomized trials failed to demonstrate significant improvement in survival with the use of postoperative chemotherapy in resected gastric cancer [4, 5]. Radical gastrectomy with extended lymph node dissection (D2 or higher) has been regarded as standard surgery in Korea and Japan. Although a survival advantage was not confirmed in randomized trials [14, 15], D2 lymph node dissection is beneficial in determining more accurate pathological staging.
In Western countries, it has been reported that the sites of treatment failure after surgical treatment were mainly locoregional, in the tumor bed. Thirty-eight per cent to 85% of the patients relapsed locally, and when there was lymph node involvement, the relapse rate was as high as 85% [16, 17]. Treatment failure sites were not restricted to the tumor bed only; 954% of patients sustained relapses in the abdomen but outside of the tumor bed [18]. The frequency of such relapses made regional radiation an attractive strategy for postoperative therapy [19]. However, in Korea and Japan where extensive (D2 or higher) lymph node dissection has been regarded as a standard surgical procedure for gastric cancer, distant organs and peritoneum were the main sites of recurrence [20, 21].
Recently, MacDonald et al. [22] reported the results of the Intergroup trial INT-0116 comparing the effect of postoperative chemoradiotherapy with that of surgery alone. They reported a significant improvement in survival with the use of chemoradiation as adjuvant therapy in resected gastric cancer.
Nevertheless, the Intergroup trial seems to have some weaknesses. First, it was difficult to assess precisely the treatment outcomes as only 181 out of 281 patients (64%) completed treatment as planned. Secondly, most patients in this study had undergone limited (D0 or D1) lymph node dissection, which might be substantially associated with increased risk of residual positive nodes and with a suspicion of inadequate nodal staging. The authors reported that 19% of the patients in the chemoradiotherapy arm had relapsed locally, whereas 29% had relapsed in the control arm, and the sites of relapse were mainly locoregional. This result may suggest the possibility of inadequate local control with limited (D0 or D1) lymph node dissection.
Our study was initially designed as a randomized trial but we failed to obtain consent from those patients randomized to the control arm, because most patients wanted to receive postoperative treatment. If we had been successful, we would have been able to draw more precise conclusions from this study. With this kind of limitation, our results demonstrate that postoperative chemoradiotherapy after resection of gastric cancer may be feasible with acceptable toxicities; however, it is still questionable that this kind of chemoradiotherapy may be of value as surgical adjuvant for gastric cancer.
Yoo et al. [21] reported that peritoneal recurrence was the most frequent (46%) in gastric cancer patients receiving D2 lymph node dissection. Randomized trials performed by Japanese investigators reported 5-year survivals of 4668% in patients with D23 resected gastric cancer staged I to IV; these rates were comparable to our results [23]. Compared with the results from the large randomized Western studies performed by Dutch [14] and British [15] investigators comparing D1 and D2 resections for gastric cancer, our result, if adjusted for stage, is superior in terms of survival. This result suggests that postoperative chemoradiotherapy may benefit patients undergoing D2 resection for gastric cancer, but only a prospective randomized surgery alone versus postoperative chemoradiotherapy in patients undergoing D2 lymph node dissection will prove whether postoperative chemoradiotherapy improves survival.
In the present study, 60% of the patients receiving postoperative chemoradiotherapy survived 5 years or more. It is still difficult to reach any definite conclusions on the influence of postoperative chemoradiotherapy on long-term survival for the patients with resected gastric cancer, especially for those who underwent D2 or higher lymph node dissection. Therefore, we hope that this study will result in a prospective randomized phase III trial of postoperative chemoradiotherapy in these patients.
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Footnotes |
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Correspondence to: Dr W. K. Kang, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sunkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 50 Ilwon-dong, Kangnam-ku, Seoul 135-710, Korea. Tel: +82-2-3410-3451; Fax: +82-2-3410-3849; E-mail: wkkang{at}smc.samsung.co.kr
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