Wide Surgical Margin Improves the Outcome for Patients with Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors (GISTs)

Surgical resection is still the main treatment for gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), and R0 excision, regardless of surgical margins, is considered sufficient.

A cohort of 79 consecutive GIST cases treated at the Karolinska University Hospital, who were without metastasis at diagnosis and who had not received any pre-or postoperative treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors, was included. Surgical margins were evaluated at the time of surgery and classified as wide, marginal or intralesional. Time to local/peritoneal recurrence, distant metastasis, and survival were recorded. Cox regression analysis was used to investigate the association between surgical margin, and recurrence and survival.

Local/peritoneal recurrence was diagnosed in 2/39 cases with wide margins, in 7/22 cases with marginal margins, and in 13/18 cases with intralesional surgery. Compared to wide margins this gives a hazard ratio of 6.8 (confidence interval 1.4-32.7) for marginal margins and 13.5 (3-61) for intralesional margins. In multivariate analysis, adjusting for size, site, and mitotic index, surgical margin remained an independent significant predictor of risk for recurrence. When classifying patients according to R0/R1 surgery, patients with R0 surgery showed longer time to peritoneal recurrence and better recurrence-free and disease-specific survival as compared to those with R1 resection. However, when excluding patients operated with wide surgical margin, no significant difference was observed.

Wide surgical margins are of significant prognostic importance, supporting the strategy of en bloc resection with good margin and careful handling of the tumor to avoid damaging the peritoneal surface in surgical resection of GIST.