260 FAILURE TO CURE IN PATIENTS UNDERGOING ESOPHAGEAL CARCINOMA SURGERY: HOSPITAL OF SURGERY INFLUENCES PROSPECTS FOR CURE. A NATIONWIDE COHORT STUDY.

Abstract

Abstract Failure to cure is a composite outcome measure that could be used for hospital comparison in surgical esophageal carcinoma care. It was first described by Clavien et al. in 1992 and was defined as the event where the procedural purpose was not fulfilled. The aim of the current study was to describe failure to cure in terms of incidence, hospital variation, and as an outcome parameter for salvage esophagectomy (surgical resection after definitive chemoradiotherapy). Methods All patients registered in the Dutch Upper GI Cancer Audit (DUCA) who underwent potentially curative esophageal carcinoma surgery between 2011 and 2018, were included in this nationwide cohort study. Failure to cure was defined as: 1) no esophagectomy due to intra-operative metastasis or locally irresectable tumour, 2) macroscopically or microscopically incomplete resection (pR1, R2), or 3) 30-day or in-hospital mortality. Association of patient, tumor and hospital characteristics with failure to cure was analyzed using multivariable logistic regression in the total population and in salvage surgery patients. Hospital variation was evaluated using multivariable regression and displayed in a case-mix corrected funnelplot. Results Some 6,045 patients from 22 hospitals were included of whom 701 (11.6%) had failure to cure (hospital variation [5.9%–19.0%]). Higher age, more preoperative weight loss, higher ASA-score, junctional tumors, higher T-stage and N-stage, no neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy, and resection before 2014 were associated with failure to cure. After case-mix correction, 2 hospitals had statistically significant lower than expected failure to cure percentages, and 2 hospitals had higher percentages (figure1). In the patients undergoing salvage esophagectomy (n = 151), the failure to cure percentage was 32.5%. This was 27.6% in high-volume hospitals (>40 annual esophagectomies) and 47.6% in medium-volume hospitals (20–40 annual esophagectomies) (p = 0.03). Conclusion This was the first study to describe failure to cure for oesophageal carcinoma patients. The incidence of failure to cure was 11.6%, which is an important prognostic parameter for patients that should be used for expectation management. Given the significant hospital variation in the incidence of failure to cure, improvement is needed. Since salvage procedures are more often successful in high-volume hospitals, further centralization of this technically challenging procedure is warranted.