The preventive effect of neoadjuvant therapy on poor long-term outcomes of postoperative complications in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: A retrospective cohort study.

Abstract

120 Background: Postoperative complications have a negative impact on overall survival after esophagectomy because systemic inflammation may induce residual cancer cell growth. A solution that could suppress micrometastasis is neoadjuvant therapy; however, to date, no study has shown that neoadjuvant therapy suppresses the proliferation of cancer cells due to postoperative complications after esophagectomy. To investigate the preventive effect of neoadjuvant therapy on poor long-term outcomes of postoperative complications in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Methods: In total, 509 patients who underwent esophagectomy for primary esophageal squamous cell carcinoma were included in this retrospective cohort study. We investigated the relationship between complications, such as pneumonia, and long-term oncologic outcomes with and without neoadjuvant therapy. Results: Among all the patients, the 3-year overall survival (OS) rate was 68.4% and the disease-free survival (DFS) rate was 58.1%. The patients were categorized into two groups: the neoadjuvant therapy (+) group (n = 227) and the neoadjuvant therapy (−) group (n = 282). Among patients not undergoing neoadjuvant therapy, the patients with pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, pyothorax, or chylothorax had significantly poorer OS and DFS than patients without these complications. However, among patients undergoing neoadjuvant therapy, there were no significant differences in long-term outcomes, regardless of the presence of complications. In multivariate analyses, pneumonia (p = 0.014) and chylothorax (p = 0.006) were identified as predictors of death in the neoadjuvant therapy (−) group. Conclusions: In patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, the negative impact of postoperative complications can be reduced by performing neoadjuvant therapy.