Study: Some With Advanced Colon Cancer Benefit From Chemotherapy

Some patients with advanced colon cancer could well gain a small but worthwhile improvement in five-year overall survival if they were treated with chemotherapy as well as surgery, according to Scandinavian researchers.

Professor Bengt Glimelius of the University Hospital in Uppsala said an analysis of trials involving patients in Denmark, Norway and Sweden showed how chemotherapy following surgery was likely to work when used as part of routine care for patients with stage II and III colon and rectal cancer.

The analysis demonstrated that among 2,223 patients, the 708 patients with stage III colon cancer had a five-year survival of 49 percent when treated by surgery alone but 56 percent when also given chemotherapy.

"Although this difference was not statistically significant, it has helped to highlight the need for chemotherapy to be given under optimum conditions and has provided vital evidence about which are the patients most likely to benefit," he told a news briefing at the European Cancer Conference.

He said the investors concluded from analysis of one trial colon cancer patients whose cancer has spread to the lymph nodes should continue receive chemotherapy as standard treatment.

He said another trial that show no overall statistically different difference in survival between those treated or not treated with chemotherapy did show a statistically significant benefit for patients with stage III colon cancer who received chemotherapy.

"The results tell us to look carefully within our trials to see what may be hidden within the overall results – for example, how results may differ between colon or rectal cancer patients, how benefits may differ between different stages of the disease or between men and women," Glimelius concluded.

Other sources: European Cancer Conference