Effect of Adjuvant Chemotherapy on Survival of Elderly Patients With Stage III Colorectal Cancer.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy and safety of adjuvant chemotherapy in elderly patients with stage III colorectal cancer in a real-world setting. A total of 165 patients of ≥70 years of age with stage III colorectal cancer who underwent a curative operation between 2008 and 2020 were enrolled in this study. Among septuagenarians, the relapse-free and overall survival rates in the single-agent therapy group and the combination therapy group were significantly better than those in the group treated by surgery alone. However, no significant differences were observed in the relapse-free and overall survival rates of the single-agent therapy group and the combination therapy group. Among octogenarians in whom all regimens were single-agent therapy, adjuvant chemotherapy tended to improve the relapse-free and overall survival rates but not the time to recurrence or cancer-specific survival. Single-agent adjuvant chemotherapy may be a useful treatment option for septuagenarians with stage III colorectal cancer. However, the efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy in octogenarians was not shown in this study.