Treatment of colorectal cancer in Armenia: A retrospective hospital-based study from a developing world.

Abstract

e16099 Background: In Armenia colorectal cancer (CRC) is on the third place by incidence. Every year around 700 new cases are diagnosed with 60% diagnosed in 3rd and 4th stages. Methods: For this retrospective hospital-based study we have collected data from two main oncology centers in Armenia: National Oncology Center and Muratsan Hospital Complex of Yerevan state medical university. The information about patients with CRC who were treated at these two centers during 01/01/2010 - 07/01/2018 period was collected from the medical records. Results: 602 patients with CRC treated during mentioned period in these two hospitals were involved in final analysis. From them 51.8% were female. Median age at diagnosis was 58. Median follow up time was 37 months (range 3-207). 26.1% had right sided, 30.9% left sided and 43.0% rectum cancer. 8.6% of patients had stage 1, 32.9% stage 2, 38.0% stage 3, 17.6% stage 4 CRC and for 2.7% patients stage was unknown. The median survival was not reached for the entire cohort ( > 37 months). Median survival was > 66.5 months for 1st, > 48.5 months for 2nd, > 35 months for 3rd and 19 months for 4th stages. Tumor stage, grade and histology were the main independent prognostic factors by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis. For stage 2 CRC patients (198) we found significant difference regarding overall survival (OS) (p = 0.024) and disease free survival (DFS) (p = 0.006) for those who received adjuvant chemotherapy after surgery compared to those who didn’t receive adjuvant chemotherapy. For stage 2 and 3 rectum cancer patients, our study failed to show OS (2nd stage: p = 0.961; 3rd stage: p = 0.348) or DFS (2nd stage: p = 0.719; 3rd stage: p = 0.983) advantage for those who received radiotherapy (RT) compared with those who didn’t receive RT. In our study population 28.3% of stage 4 patients received chemotherapy combined with Bevacizumab while 70% were treated with chemotherapy only. Median OS between these two groups wasn’t significantly different (21 months in Chemo+Bevacizumab group and 18.5 months in chemo only group (p = 0.382)). 3 and 5-year survival rates were 62.9% and 51.8% for all stages combined and 79.7% and 68.5% for stages 1-2, 62.5% and 48.4% for stage 3, 24.4% and 17% for stage 4 respectively. Conclusions: As seen from our results our survival rates are inferior compared to that of developed world. The reasons for that could be compromise in surgery and RT, poor pathological assessment, unavailability of some molecular markers, poor availability of new targeted drugs and absence of national treatment guidelines.