Nodal Metastases in Rectal Cancer: The Role of Surgery in Outcome

The Essentials of Locoregional Control in the Treatment of Gastric Cancer

Gastric cancer is the fourth most frequent cancer in the world. For curative treatment and local control of gastric cancer, surgery is essential. The extent of the lymph node dissection is still under debate. Only one available trial showed significantly increased overall survival, whereas in all other randomised trials no significant difference could be found.

As surgery alone often is not sufficient in the curative treatment in gastric cancer, different (neo)adjuvant treatment strategies have extensively been studied. The recently published MAGIC trial showed downstaging, downsizing and an improved overall survival for patients treated with perioperative chemotherapy, compared to surgery alone (difference 13%, p = 0.009). The INT 0116 trial on the other hand, demonstrated the benefit of postoperative chemoradiotherapy compared to surgery alone for patients with a curative resection of gastric cancer. However, the quality of resections in this trial was poor, illustrating the importance of standardisation by quality control. This could be done by the Maruyama index, which quantifies the likelihood of unresected disease.

In the Netherlands, the CRITICS trial has recently been launched, which will be a quality controlled trial comparing postoperative chemoradiotherapy and chemotherapy on survival and/or locoregional control in patients who receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by a D1+ gastric resection.

Prediction of treatment outcome by CD44v6 after total mesorectal excision in locally advanced rectal cancer

BACKGROUND

The purpose of this study was to investigate the significance of CD44 variant 6 (CD44v6) in predicting the treatment outcome of locally advanced adenocarcinoma of the rectum after total mesorectal excision (TME).

METHODS

Expression of CD44v6 protein was detected using immunohistochemistry in 179 patients with pathologically confirmed stage II or III rectal adenocarcinoma. All patients were treated with TME, and neither neoadjuvant nor adjuvant radiotherapy were used. The correlation between the expression of CD44v6 and other disease-related characteristics with treatment outcome was investigated.

RESULTS

The 5-year overall survival and disease-free survival rates were 66.75% and 65.77%, respectively, and the overall locoregional recurrence rate was 8.13% for the entire group of patients. CD44v6 was present in 41.9% of all patients. Multivariate analysis revealed that CD44v6 status and pelvic nodal metastasis were independent risk factors for the rate of distant metastases (P = 0.036 and 0.035, respectively), disease-free survival (P = 0.009 and 0.016, respectively), and overall survival (P = 0.048 and 0.034, respectively). Lymph node metastasis was the only independent risk factor for locoregional recurrence (P = 0.048), and a trend was found for CD44v6 on predicting the locoregional recurrence (P = 0.06) with both stage II and III diseases. CD44v6 is significantly associated with locoregional recurrence in stage III rectal cancer (hazard ratio 6.02, 95% confidence interval 1.25-29.0; P = 0.018), and the overall locoregional recurrence was significantly higher for patients with positive expression of CD44v6 than for those with negative expression (17.63% vs 6.62%; P = 0.026).

CONCLUSION

CD44v6 expression in cancer cells is a sensitive marker for predicting the treatment outcome in patients with stage II and III adenocarcinoma of the rectum after TME and may be used to determine the necessity of adjuvant treatment. However, further investigations are needed to determine the clinical application of CD44v6 and its reliability.

Quality assurance of surgery in gastric and rectal cancer

Multimodality and quality controlled treatment result in improved treatment outcome in patients with solid tumours. Quality assurance focuses on identifying and reducing variations in treatment strategy. Treatment outcome is subsequently improved through the introduction of programs that reduce treatment variations to an acceptable level and implement standardised treatment. In chemotherapy and radiotherapy, such programmes have been introduced successfully. In surgery however, there has been little attention for quality assurance so far. Surgery is the mainstay in the treatment of patients with gastric and rectal cancer. In gastric cancer, the extent of surgery is continuously being debated. In Japan, extended lymph node dissection is favoured whereas in the West this type of surgery is not routinely performed with two large European trials concluding that there is no survival benefit from regional lymph node clearance. Post-operative chemoradiation is part of the standard treatment in the United States, although its role in combination with adequate surgery has not been established yet. These global differences in treatment policy clearly relate to the extent and quality of surgical treatment. As for gastric cancer, surgical treatment of rectal cancer patients determines patient's prognosis to a large extent. With the introduction of total mesorectal excision, local control and survival have improved substantially. Most rectal cancer patients receive adjuvant treatment, either pre- or post-operatively. The efficacy of many adjuvant treatment regimens has been investigated in combination with conventional suboptimal surgery. Traditional indications of adjuvant treatment might have to be re-examined, considering the substantial changes in surgical practise. Quality assurance programs enable the introduction of standardised and quality controlled surgery. Promising adjuvant regimens should be investigated in combination with optimal surgery.

The importance of quality assurance in surgical oncology

AIMS

The aims were to review the existing methods of quality assurance in surgical oncology and to determine a relationship between surgery-related factors and the variety in outcomes in the treatment of solid cancers.

METHODS

The literature was reviewed by searching Medline and Cancerlit databases.

RESULTS

Wide variations were found in virtually all tumour types. Clear evidence was found that an improvement in the quality of the surgical procedure could have major implications for the prognosis and quality of life of cancer patients.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings emphasize the need for strict quality control procedures in surgical oncology and might imply a considerable change in cancer treatment strategies, because the routine use of adjuvant therapies could be questioned.