Long-term complete response of unresectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer

Recent advances in chemotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer, such as fluorouracil -leucovorin, irinotecan, oxliplatin, and bevacizumab, have been demonstrated to achieve a high response rate. For most patients with unresectable liver metastases, however, chemotherapy is still not considered to provide a sufficient long-term disease-free survival without a surgical resection. We herein report two cases of a complete response for more than 8 years after having received treatment consisting of hepatic arterial infusion of fluorouracil and oral chemotherapy for unresectable liver metastases. The clinicopathological characteristics of these two cases were as follows: the number of liver metastases, 20, 11; the maximum size, 1.2 cm, 2.8 cm; the serum carcinoembryonic antigen level, 1.2 ng/ ml, 2.4 ng/ml. The following computed tomography scan revealed the liver metastases to have completely disappeared 7 months and 22 months after the treatment, respectively. It is speculated that a small size and a low level carcinoembryonic antigen may predict a good response to chemotherapy for unresectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer.