Objective To investigate the risk factors of liver metastasis in patients with middle and low rectal cancer of Ⅱ–Ⅲ stage after preoperative short course radiotherapy combined with chemotherapy. MethodsThe clinical data of 89 patients with middle and low rectal cancer of Ⅱ–Ⅲ stage admitted to the Dongnan Hospital of Xiamen University from January 2019 to June 2020 were retrospectively analyzed. All patients were treated with short-course radiotherapy combined with chemotherapy before operation. The risk factors of postoperative liver metastasis were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression. ResultsThe 89 patients were followed up for 7–53 months, with a median follow-up time of 33 months. During the follow-up period, 25 patients developed liver metastasis, the onset time was 7–35 months, and the median time of liver metastasis was 17 months. Among them, 5 patients (5.6%) developed liver metastasis in the first year after surgery, 15 patients (16.8%) developed liver metastasis at the second year after surgery, 5 patients (5.6%) developed liver metastasis at the 3rd year after surgery. Multivariate logistic regression results showed that lymph node metastasis [OR=3.550, 95%CI (1.425, 8.953), P=0.041], vascular invasion [OR=3.335, 95%CI (1.011, 11.001), P=0.048], maximum tumor diameter ≥5 cm [OR=4.477, 95%CI (1.273, 15.743), P=0.019], and peri-tumor diameter ≥1/2 [OR=4.633, 95%CI (1.387, 15.475), P=0.013] were risk factors for liver metastasis. ConclusionsLymph node metastasis, vascular invasion, maximum tumor diameter ≥5 cm, and circumferential tumor diameter ≥1/2 are risk factors for liver metastasis in patients with middle and low rectal cancer of Ⅱ–Ⅲ stage after preoperative short course radiotherapy combined with chemotherapy.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a prevalent malignant tumor worldwide. With the development of medical technology, the treatment strategies of CRC are constantly improving and updating. The aim of treating CRC is not only to improve outcomes but also to maintain organ function and enhance quality of life. For patients with locally advanced rectal cancer, a variety of neoadjuvant treatment options are available and it is important to choose an individualized strategy. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have become an important part of the first- and posterior-line treatment for patients with deficient mis-match repair or high microsatellite instability colorectal cancer in metastatic colorectal cancer, and the emergence of new targets and drugs has further improved treatment efficacy and long-term survival. Furthermore, an increasing number of studies have confirmed the potential the value of predicting and guiding treatment for minimal residual disease. This article summarizes the representative research results, guideline updates, and important academic conference reports in the field of colorectal cancer.
Objective To evaluate the safety and efficacy of neoadjuvant therapy followed by minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) for locally advanced esophageal cancer. Methods We retrospectively analyzed clinical data of 56 consecutive patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer treated by neoadjuvant therapy followed by surgery in our hospital between January 2015 and December 2016. There were 51 males and 5 females. The patients were divided into 2 groups. Neoadjuvant therapy followed by open surgery esophagectomy group was as an OE group with 25 patients aged 61 (50-73) years. And neoadjuvant therapy followed by MIE was as a MIE group with 31 patients aged 60 (55-79) years. Results The pathologic complete response (pCR) rate of 28 patients with neoadjuvant concurrent chemoradiotherapy was significantly higher than that of 28 patients with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (21.4% vs. 10.7%, P<0.05). The operation time, intraoperative blood loss, R2 rate and the number of lymph nodes dissection in the MIE group were obviously better than those of the OE group with statistical differences (P<0.05). However, there was no significant difference in the number of resected lymph nodes along the bilateral recurrent laryngeal nerves and lymph node metastasis rate (P>0.05) between the two groups. The incidence of postoperative respiratory complications in the MIE group was lower than that of the OE group (P=0.041). There was no significant difference between the two groups in the incidence of other complications, re-operation, re-entry to ICU, median length of stay or perioperative deaths (P>0.05). There was only one patient with neoadjuvant concurrent chemoradiotherapy in the OE group died due to gastric fluid asphyxia caused by trachea-esophageal fistula. Conclusion Neoadjuvant therapy followed by MIE for locally advanced esophageal cancer is safe and feasible. The oncological outcomes seem comparable regardless of OE.
Organ preservation after neoadjuvant therapy for esophageal cancer has gained significant attention. While the CROSS trial established neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) followed by surgery as standard care, approximately 30% of patients achieve pathological complete response (pCR), prompting exploration of active surveillance (AS). The landmark SANO phase Ⅲ trial (2025) demonstrated non-inferior 2-year overall survival (74% AS vs. 71% surgery), with 31% of patients avoiding surgery. Multimodal assessment (endoscopic deep biopsy+EUS+PET-CT) reduced residual disease misdiagnosis to 10%. The Asian-led NEEDS trial is evaluating definitive chemoradiotherapy with salvage surgery. Although immunotherapy boosts pCR rates to 40%-55%, challenges persist, including 8%-12% false-negative cCR assessments, limited long-term data, and East-West histological disparities. The 2024 NCCN guidelines conditionally recommend AS (Category 2B, prioritized for squamous cell carcinoma), emphasizing centralized implementation. Future directions involve ctDNA and radiomics for risk stratification to advance precision organ-preserving strategies.
ObjectiveTo make a comprehensive review of the value of radiomics for prediction of therapeutic responses to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).MethodRelevant literatures about the therapeutic response evaluation of LARC by using radiomics were collected to make an review.ResultRadiomics had good predictive value in terms of complete pathologic response (pCR) and treatment effectiveness of NCRT in patients with LARC.ConclusionRadiomics, a new imaging diagnostic technique, plays an important role in the prediction of the efficacy of NCRT in LARC.
Objective To evaluate the effects of neoadjuvant long-course chemoradiotherapy (CRT), neoadjuvant short-course radiotherapy (SCRT), and total neoadjuvant treatment (TNT) on chemoradiotherapy related complications and perioperative safety in mid-low rectal cancer patients. Methods The clinical data of 63 rectal cancer patients who received neoadjuvant (chemo) radiotherapies and surgery treatment in West China Hospital from Jul. 2014 to Feb. 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. According to the neoadjuvant regimen, the patients were divided into CRT group (n=15), SCRT group (n=30), and TNT group (n=18), and then the effects of these 3 kinds of neoadjuvant regimen on chemoradiotherapy related complications and perioperative safety were compared. Results ① Chemoradiotherapy related complications: among all the included 63 patients, 29 patients (46.0%) occurred chemoradiotherapy related complications, including radiation enteritis in 9 patients and bone marrow suppression in 25 patients. There were significant differences in the overall incidence of chemoradiotherapy related complications, incidence of radiation enteritis and bone marrow suppression (P≤0.001). The overall incidence of chemoradiotherapy related complications and incidence of bone marrow suppression of SCRT group were lower. ② Perioperative safety: no significant differences were found in the incidence of surgical complications, incidence of specific surgical complication, operation duration, intraoperative blood loss, and postoperative flatus time (P<0.05), but there was significant difference in the postoperative hospital stay among 3 groups (P=0.033), the postoperative hospital stay of SCRT group was shorter. Conclusion CRT, SCRT, and TNT have similar effect on the safety in the mid-low rectal cancer patients, which suggests that SCRT is worthy of further research and promotion.
ObjectiveTo evaluate the efficacy and safety of concurrent chemoradiotherapy versus sequential chemoradiotherapy in the treatment of locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer. MethodsThe relevant literature was searched in PubMed, Web of Science, CNKI and Wanfang databases from the inception to October 15, 2023, and the literature was screened according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Review Manager 5.3 software was used for meta-analysis of the literature, and the Cochrane bias risk assessment tool was used to evaluate the quality of the literature. Results Finally, 14 randomized controlled studies were included covering a total of 1048 patients. The results of meta-analysis showed that the overall response rate [OR=2.39, 95%CI (1.83, 3.11)], 1-year survival rate [OR=1.81, 95%CI (1.39, 2.35)], 2-year survival rate [OR=1.75, 95%CI (1.27, 2.42)] and 3-year survival rate [OR=2.33, 95%CI (1.49, 3.66)] were superior to sequential chemoradiotherapy, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). In terms of safety, concurrent chemoradiotherapy increased the incidence of radiation esophagitis (P<0.05), but there was no statistical difference in the incidence of leukopenia and radiation pneumonia (P>0.05). Conclusion For patients with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer, the short-term efficacy of concurrent chemoradiotherapy is better than that of sequential chemoradiotherapy and can improve the 1-, 2- and 3-year survival rates, but the toxic side effects of the treatment are slightly greater than those of the sequential chemoradiotherapy.
ObjectiveTo construct a multimodal imaging radiomics model based on enhanced CT features to predict tumor regression grade (TRG) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) following neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT). MethodsA retrospective analysis was conducted on the Database from Colorectal Cancer (DACCA) at West China Hospital of Sichuan University, including 199 LARC patients treated from October 2016 to October 2023. All patients underwent total mesorectal excision after NCRT. Clinical pathological information was collected, and radiomics features were extracted from CT images prior to NCRT. Python 3.13.0 was used for feature dimension reduction, and univariate logistic regression (LR) along with Lasso regression with 5-fold cross-validation were applied to select radiomics features. Patients were randomly divided into training and testing sets at a ratio of 7∶3 for machine learning and joint model construction. The model’s performance was evaluated using accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and the area under the curve (AUC). Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), confusion matrices, and clinical decision curves (DCA) were plotted to assess the model’s performance. ResultsAmong the 199 patients, 155 (77.89%) had poor therapeutic outcomes, while 44 (22.11%) had good outcomes. Univariate LR and Lasso regression identified 8 clinical pathological features and 5 radiomic features, including 1 shape feature, 2 first-order statistical features, and 2 texture features. LR, support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and eXtreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) models were established. In the training set, the AUC values of LR, SVM, RF, XGBoost models were 0.99, 0.98, 1.00, and 1.00, respectively, with accuracy rates of 0.94, 0.93, 1.00, and 1.00, sensitivity rates of 0.98, 1.00, 1.00, and 1.00, and specificity rates of 0.80, 0.67, 1.00, and 1.00, respectively. In the testing set, the AUC values of 4 models were 0.97, 0.92, 0.96, and 0.95, with accuracy rates of 0.87, 0.87, 0.88, and 0.90, sensitivity rates of 1.00, 1.00, 1.00, and 0.95, and specificity rates of 0.50, 0.50, 0.56, and 0.75. Among the models, the XGBoost model had the best performance, with the highest accuracy and specificity rates. DCA indicated clinical benefits for all 4 models. ConclusionsThe multimodal imaging radiomics model based on enhanced CT has good clinical application value in predicting the efficacy of NCRT in LARC. It can accurately predict good and poor therapeutic outcomes, providing personalized clinical surgical interventions.
ObjectiveTo study the value of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) in predicting and evaluating the efficacy of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT) in the middle-low locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).MethodsThe patients were included prospectively who were clinically diagnosed as the LARC and were scheduled to undergo the NCRT and total mesorectal excision (TME) in the Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital from February 2018 to November 2019. The routine MRI and DCE-MRI were performed before and after the NCRT, then the TME was performed. According to the score of tumor regression grade (TRG), the patients with TGR score of 0, 1 or 2 were classified as the response to NCRT group, and those with TRG score of 3 were classified as the non-response to NCRT group; in addition, the patients with TGR score of 0 or 1 were classified as the good-response group, with TRG score of 2 or 3 were classified as the poor-response group. The differences of quantitative perfusion parameters of DCE-MRI between two groups were compared, including the volume transfer constant (Ktrans), flux rate constant (Kep), and extravascular extracellular volume fraction (Ve) and the change rates of these parameters (ΔKtrans, ΔKep, and ΔVe).ResultsForty-one patients who met the inclusion criteria were included in this study, including 27 cases in the response to NCRT group and 14 cases in the non-response to NCRT group; 11 cases in the the good-response group and 30 cases in the poor-response group. ① The values of Ktrans before the NCRT and the ΔKtrans in the response to NCRT group were higher than those in the non-response to NCRT (P<0.05), while the other indexes had no significant differences between these two groups (P>0.05). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs) of Ktrans and ΔKtrans in predicting the efficacy of NCRT were 0.954 and 0.709, respectively. When the optimal thresholds of Ktrans and ΔKtrans were 0.122/min and –24.2%, the specificity and sensitivity were 85.7%, 96.3% and 100%, 51.7%, respectively. ② The Ktrans value in the good-response group was higher before NCRT and which was lower after NCRT as compared with the poor-response group (P<0.05). The absolute value of the the ΔKtrans and ΔKep in the good-response group were higher than those in the poor-response group (P<0.05). The other indexes had no significant differences between these two groups (P>0.05). The AUC of Ktrans before NCRT in predicting the efficacy of NCRT was 0.953. When the optimal thresholds of Ktrans before NCRT was 0.158 /min, the specificity and sensitivity were 88.7% and 90.9%, respectively. The AUC of ΔKtrans in predicting the efficacy of NCRT was higher than that of the ΔKep (0.952 versus 0.764, Z=2.063, P=0.039). When the optimal threshold of ΔKtrans was –38.8%, the specificity and sensitivity were 76.7% and 100%, respectively.ConclusionsDCE-MRI can predict and evaluate the effect of NCRT in patients with middle-low LARC, especially Ktrans and ΔKtrans (change rate before and after NCRT) have a high diagnostic efficiency.
ObjectiveTo investigate effect of carbon nanoparticles on number of lymph nodes harvested in radical operation of rectal cancer after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. MethodsOne hundred and five patients diagnosed with low and middle rectal cancer and received radical operation after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences from March 1, 2014 to October 31, 2015 were included. Thirtysix patients were injected with carbon nanoparticles by colonoscopy before surgery and were classified as study group, and the rest patients were classified as control group. According to the same principle of surgery and procedure of pathological specimen handling, the effect of carbon nanoparticles on lymph node harvested in resected specimens was analyzed. ResultsThe total lymph nodes harvested were 764 in the study group and 1 242 in the control group. Among them, the metastatic lymph nodes were 19 in the study group, 58 in the control group. Although the average lymph nodes harvested in each patient had no significant difference between the study group and the control group (21.22±7.13 versus 18.00±9.84, t=1.739, P=0.085), the proportion of patients with 12 or more than 12 lymph nodes harvested in the study group was significantly higher than that in the control group [88.9% (32/36) versus 71.0% (49/69), χ2=4.287, P=0.038]. The ratio of patients with metastatic lymph nodes [27.8% (10/36) versus 33.3% (23/69), χ2=0.339, P=0.561] and the average metastatic lymph nodes harvested in each patient (1.90±1.29 versus 2.52±2.33, t=0.788, P=0.437) all had no significant differences between the study group and the control group. ConclusionThe injection of carbon nanoparticles by colonoscopy before surgery could increase detection rate of 12 or more than 12 lymph nodes in resected specimens of patients who were diagnosed with low and middle rectal cancer and received radical operation after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.