Neoadjuvant (preoperative) chemoradiotherapy of advanced rectal tumors

Introduction: There have been significant changes in the treatment protocol for rectal tumors in recent decades, greatly reducing the rate of local recurrence and distant metastasis, thereby increasing overall survival. Method: We performed a retrospective processing and statistical analysis of the data of 362 patients with rectal cancer who underwent local neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and then underwent surgical treatment between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2017 at the Institute of Surgery of the University of Debrecen. We compared the response rate and overall survival results of our patients with local neoadjuvant treatment to the outcomes of total neoadjuvant treatment reported by the recent large international studies. Results: We experienced complete pathological regression in 8.6% of our patients. After neoadjuvant therapy, 10.7% of our patients experienced distant metastasis at the time of the operation or within 3 months period thereafter. In our study, the rate of response to the neoadjuvant treatment was a prognostic factor independent of the stage at di-agnosis and recognition. The groups with better response produced significantly better survival results. Conclusion: The total neoadjuvant treatment doubled the number of patients with complete pathological response, and the incidence of distant metastasis was by 7% lower in both recent international studies compared to the local neoadjuvant group. 85% of our patients were T3-4N+ stage at the time of recognition. Given the 10.7% rate of dis- tant metastases detected at the time of surgery or within 3 months in our patient population, we can state that ap- proximately half of our patients would have benefited from the administration of total neoadjuvant therapy which produced better outcomes. Based on this conclusion, we decided to introduce the total neoadjuvant therapy protocol in our department for treatment of patients with advanced rectal tumors.