Abstract
Distant metastasis in patients with rectal cancer remains a problem influencing prognosis. Prediction of synchronous distant metastasis is important for the choice of personalized treatment strategies and postoperative follow-up protocol. So far, there are few studies about the predictive value of MRI features combined with clinical characteristics for synchronous distant metastasis in rectal cancer, especially for the lesions developed within 6 months after surgery. We retrospectively reviewed the pretreatment clinical characteristics and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features of 271 patients from January 2010 to December 2011with pathologically confirmed rectal adenocarcinoma and tried to identify independent risk factors for synchronous distant metastasis. Forty-nine patients (18.1%) were confirmed to have synchronous distant metastasis. Multivariate logistic regression model demonstrated that the elevated carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), positive MRI-predicted lymph nodes staging (mrN), and MRI-predicted mesorectal fascia (mrMRF) involvement were independent risk factors. The odd ratios were 12.2 for elevated CEA, 5.4 for mrN1 and 7.6 for mrN2, and 3.8 for mrMRF involvement, respectively. The accuracy and specificity for predicting synchronous distant metastasis by evaluating the positive mrN combined with elevated CEA were improved to 87.8% and 94.6%, respectively. The accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of positive mrN assessment were 86.1%, 71.4% and 91.7%, respectively using the histopathologic results as the reference standard. Altogether, our findings suggest that pretreatment positive mrN and elevated CEA are independent risk factors for synchronous distant metastasis in rectal cancer and combination of both could help to recognize the patients with high risk for structuring personalized treatment protocol.
Highlights
Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the world and its incidence is on the rise [1]
Multivariate logistic regression model demonstrated that the elevated carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), positive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-predicted lymph nodes staging, and MRI-predicted mesorectal fascia involvement were independent risk factors
Our findings suggest that pretreatment positive MRI-predicted lymph nodes staging (mrN) and elevated CEA are independent risk factors for synchronous distant metastasis in rectal cancer and combination of both could help to recognize the patients with high risk for structuring personalized treatment protocol
Summary
Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the world and its incidence is on the rise [1]. Distant metastasis rate for rectal cancer remains constant at 20-50% [2,3,4,5]. For patients with untreated colorectal metastatic lesions, the 5-year survival rate was less than 5% [6]. The 5-year survival rate for patients treated with surgical resection of www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget colorectal liver or lung metastasis could increase to 40% and 56.2%, respectively [7,8,9]. There are quite a few studies about predictive factors for prognosis in rectal cancer. The serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is known to be a widely available tumor marker for preoperative evaluation and postoperative detection of distant metastasis in patients with rectal cancer [20, 21]. The predictive significance of pretreatment CEA level and the cut-off value for the synchronous distant recurrence have yet to be conclusively determined [21]
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