Refusal of surgery results in inferior survival in esophageal cancer.

Abstract

364 Background: Trimodality therapy with chemoradiation followed by surgery is the standard of care for non-metastatic esophageal cancer. Some patients refuse surgery and this information is captured in the National Cancer Database (NCDB). We sought to understand factors associated with refusal of surgery in these patients and to compare their survival rates with those who undergo surgery. Methods: Data from the NCDB for patients with pathologically proven non-metastatic esophageal cancer from 2006 to 2013 were pooled and screened. Patients with T1N0M0 disease were excluded. Pearson’s chi-squared test and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to assess the distribution of demographic, clinical, and treatment factors. After propensity-score matching with inverse probability of treatment weighting, overall survival (OS) was compared between patients who refused surgery and those who had surgery using Kaplan Meier analyses and doubly-robust estimation with multivariate Cox proportional hazards modeling. Results: We found 890 of 18,942 patients (4.6%) refused surgery. Older patients, females, those with squamous histology, patients insured by Medicare and those who received radiation therapy (RT) were more likely to refuse. Patients who had N1 disease, high incomes, those who received chemotherapy and those who lived farther from care were more likely to have surgery. The initial 6 month OS was not significantly different between patients who refused surgery and those who had surgery (93.5% vs 95.1% P= 0.064). However, five-year OS was significantly lower in patients who refused (16.4% vs. 38.4% P< .01). This survival decrement was observed uniquely in patients with both adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma histology. Among those who refused surgery, the OS decrement was mitigated by increasing RT doses. In those who received over 54 Gy of RT, there was no statistical difference in OS between the groups (HR = 0.84, 95% CI 0.65-1.09). Conclusions: We identified a number of patient characteristics that are related to the refusal of surgery in esophageal cancer. Refusal of surgery was related to a decrease in OS in propensity weighted cohorts. This survival decrement may be mitigated by RT in a dose dependent fashion.