Adjuvant chemotherapy is associated with improved overall survival in patients with stage II colon cancer regardless of treatment regimen, patient age, or high-risk pathologic risk features, a study published in the journal Cancer has shown.1
The use of adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with stage II colon cancer varies between patients and institutions. Guidelines currently recommend discussing adjuvant chemotherapy for patients with high-risk disease due to the lack of conclusive randomized controlled trial data. Therefore, researchers sought to investigate the association between adjuvant chemotherapy and overall survival with respect to age and pathologic risk features.
For the study, investigators retrospectively analyzed data from 153,110 patients with stage II colon cancer diagnosed from 1998 to 2006 and had survival information through 2011.
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Results showed that age younger than 65 years, male sex, nonwhite race, use of a community treatment facility, non-Medicare insurance, and diagnosis before 2004 were associated with receipt of chemotherapy.
Researchers also found that after adjusting for multiple variables, improved and clinically relevant overall survival was associated with the receipt of adjuvant chemotherapy in all patient subgroups irrespective of high-risk tumor pathologic features, age, or chemotherapy regimen (P <.001).
Of note, investigators did not observe a difference in overall survival between patients who received single-agent chemotherapy and those who received multiagent adjuvant regimens.
Reference
1. Casadaban L, Rauscher G, Aklilu M, Villenes D, Freels S, Maker AV. Adjuvant chemotherapy is associated with improved survival in patients with stage II colon cancer. 2016 Jul 15. doi: 10.1002/cncr.30181. [Epub ahead of print]
