The prognostic significance of tumor laterality in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

The prognostic value of circumferential resection margin (CRM) definition and location in esophageal cancer: A 12-year cohort study

BACKGROUND

The definition of the circumferential resection margin (CRM) involvement for esophageal cancer varies between the Royal College of Pathologists (RCP) and College of American Pathologists (CAP). There are insufficient data regarding the prognostic relevance of different sites of involvement at the CRM. In this study, we examined the prognostic impacts of different CRM definitions and different radial margin locations.

METHODS

This retrospective study included 449 patients who were treated by curative esophagectomy for esophageal or junctional cancers between 2010 and 2021. The distance of the closest tumour cells to the inked CRM was examined and site of CRM involvement was recorded. Patients with an involved longitudinal resection margin were excluded. Long-term follow up data were obtained from the hospital's electronic health records.

RESULTS

Tumour cells at or within 1 mm from the CRM (CRM-RCP R1≤1 mm) was observed in 196 patients (43.7 %). CRM(≤1 mm) was associated with poorer overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) compared to CRM-R0, p-values <0.001 for both. Tumour cells at the CRM (CRM-CAP R1-0 mm) was observed in 61 patients (13.6 %). Patients with CRM-0mm had poorer OS and DFS compared to CRM≤1 mm, p-values 0.039 and 0.013 respectively. Presence of tumour cells (CRM≤1 mm) at multiple locations of the CRM was related to poorer survival compared to a single location; (OS p-value 0.008, DFS p-value 0.05). The posterior margin was the most common positive single CRM-positive site (44 %), followed by anterior (39 %) and lateral sites (17 %). However, the anterior margins carried poorer OS and DFS compared to posterior and lateral sites, (p-values 0.37 and 0.39 respectively).

CONCLUSION

This study demonstrated that CRM involvement as defined by RCP was an independent prognostic factor for both survival and recurrence in esophageal cancer. It promoted the value of additional reporting CRM-0mm in CRM-R1 cases. The study also investigated the relative importance of reporting CRM-R1 location, which might be a useful prognostic tool in the future.

Efficacy of Lymph Node Location-Number Hybrid Staging System on the Prognosis of Gastric Cancer Patients

BACKGROUND

Lymph node metastasis location and number significantly affects the prognosis of patients with gastric cancer (GC). This study was designed to examine a new lymph node hybrid staging (hN) system to increase the predictive ability for patients with GC.

METHODS

This study analyzed the gastrointestinal treatment of GC at the Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital from January 2011 to December 2016, and selected 2598 patients from 2011 to 2015 as the training cohort (hN) and 756 patients from 2016 as the validation cohort (2016-hN). The study utilized the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), c-index, and decision curve analysis (DCA) to compare the prognostic performance of the hN with the 8th edition of AJCC pathological lymph node (pN) staging for GC patients.

RESULTS

The ROC verification of the training cohort and validation cohort based on each hN staging and pN staging showed that for each N staging, the hN staging had a training cohort with an AUC of 0.752 (0.733, 0.772) and a validation cohort with an AUC of 0.812 (0.780, 0.845). In the pN staging, the training cohort had an AUC of 0.728 (0.708, 0.749), and the validation cohort had an AUC of 0.784 (0.754, 0.824). c-Index and DCA also showed that hN staging had a higher prognostic ability than pN staging, which was confirmed in the training cohort and the verification cohort, respectively.

CONCLUSION

Lymph node location-number hybrid staging can significantly improve the prognosis of patients with GC.

Prognostic value of metabolic volume measured by F-18 FDG PET-CT in patients with esophageal cancer

PURPOSE

  The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of the metabolic tumor volume (MTV) measured by F-18 Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET-CT) in predicting recurrence free survival (RFS) in patients with esophageal cancer.

METHODS

  Forty-five patients with squamous cell carcinoma, who had undergone whole-body F-18 FDG PET-CT scans before surgical resection, were included in this study. All patients were treated with Ivor-Lewis esophagectomy. The MTV was quantified within the primary tumor using the 50% threshold of the maximum standardized uptake value (SUV_max ) of the FDG uptake areas. The cutoff value of MTV₅₀ was determined through receiver-operating characteristic curve. The Kaplan Meier method was used to find out the relationship between RFS and MTV₅₀ . Univariate analysis and multivariate proportional hazards regression analysis were applied to test the significance of volumetric parameter of F-18 FDG PET-CT and other conventional prognostic factors for the prediction of RFS.

RESULTS

  Overall median follow up period was 17.87 months (range: 1.07-63.27 months). The median survival between treatment completion and recurrence was 15.5 months (range: 1.37-72.43 months). Recurrence was found in eight patients. On univariate analysis, MTV₅₀ (P = 0.0032), N stage (P = 0.0004), American Joint Committee on Cancer stage (P = 0.0101), tumor location (P = 0.0054) and adjuvant treatment (P = 0.0373) were significant predictors of RFS. Multivariate analysis showed that the independent prognostic factors were MTV₅₀ (P = 0.0465), N stage (P = 0.0303) and tumor location (P = 0.0270).

CONCLUSION

  Volume based parameter of F-18 FDG PET-CT may have a role in providing prognostic information in esophageal cancer patients who received esophagectomy.