Correlation analyses between pre- and post-operative adverse events in gastric cancer patients receiving preoperative treatment and gastrectomy

Gastric cancer is the fifth most prevalent cancer worldwide, and more than 70 % of them occur in less developed countries [1], where they are often diagnosed at an advanced stage. D2 gastrectomy is regarded as the standard surgical treatment for locally advanced gastric cancer (AGC) based on randomized controlled trials [2, 3]. However, further treatment in addition to surgery is required to improve patient survival. The kind of additional treatment varies in different parts of the world: in East Asia, adjuvant chemotherapy after D2 gastrectomy is standard treatment for AGC [4, 5], whereas perioperative chemotherapy or postoperative chemoradiotherapy with gastrectomy is standard treatment in the West [6‐8].

Recently, the use of preoperative chemotherapy (PCT) has gained increasing interest because of its possible advantages: 1) tumor down-staging increases the possibility of achieving complete surgical resection, 2) early application of chemotherapy may be effective in controlling micrometastases, 3) patients are more tolerable to chemotherapy before surgery, 4) the delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs will be enhanced because the blood supply to the tumor is intact, and 5) responses to chemotherapy are easily detected. PCT may even be useful for select patients with metastatic gastric cancer (MGC) prior to surgery [9, 10].

Despite these potential advantages, adverse events (AEs) due to PCT or preoperative chemoradiotherapy (PCRT) leading to deterioration of a patient’s physical condition could limit the ability to tolerate surgery. This is particularly relevant, as previously reported incidences of severe AEs ranged from 23.8 to 37.6 % [6, 7]. Thus, there are concerns that PCT or PCRT could increase postoperative morbidity [11]. Although postoperative morbidity after PCT or PCRT has been previously reported to be similar to that noted with surgery alone [6, 7, 12], to our knowledge, no previous studies have addressed the issue of whether preoperative AEs increase the likelihood or severity of postoperative complications. The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between preoperative AEs and postoperative complications in patients who underwent gastrectomy for AGC or MGC after receiving PCT or PCRT.

In this retrospective study, we focused on the relationship between preoperative AEs and postoperative complications in patients with AGC or MGC who received PCT or PCRT. The incidence of both total AEs and total serious AEs were extremely high compared to previous studies [6, 7, 17]. The 5.0 median cycles of PCT or PCRT in our study may have contributed to this discrepancy, as it is reasonable to expect a higher incidence of AEs in our population who received extensive preoperative treatment. Even in the time period very close to surgery (within 30 days before surgery), we observed a relatively high incidence of total AEs. The AEs associated with PCT or PCRT would definitely negatively affect a patient’s physical condition, which may subsequently influence the postoperative course; thus, concerns have arisen about the safety of performing gastrectomy and lymphadenectomy for such vulnerable patients.

A correlation between poor physical status and postoperative morbidity was previously reported by Jung et al. [18], who indicated that patients with preoperative anemia had a higher morbidity rate after radical gastrectomy than patients without. By contrast, the CTCAE grades for AEs in our study did not correlate with postoperative CD grades. A similar result was reported by Reim et al. [19], who noted that preoperative leukopenia due to neoadjuvant chemotherapy had no significant effect on postoperative complications after total gastrectomy plus D2 lymphadenectomy. However, because there were many discrepancies in patient selection, evaluation criteria, surgical procedures, and diagnostic standards among the previous studies, it was difficult to make definitive conclusions from these studies. The results of our current study can reduce concerns regarding the safety of surgery after PCT or PCRT, but they cannot eliminate them. A well-designed clinical trial is required to provide firm conclusions regarding this issue.

In previous studies, postoperative morbidity rates after gastrectomy plus lymphadenectomy varied from 25.7 to 45.7 % in patients who underwent PCT or PCRT [6, 7, 11, 12]. The morbidity rate of 47.0 % in our study is relatively high but still comparable to the rate noted in a previous report from our institute [11]. In the present study, a high percentage of patients had stage IV cancer and underwent total gastrectomy and combined resection, which suggests that their surgery was more complicated. Postoperative morbidity may have been increased for this reason. It should be noted that the most common minor (CD1/2) complication in our study was pulmonary-related complications, a type of non-surgery-related complications. It is quite possible that these complications were related to a poor physical status of patients after PCT or PCRT. Additionally, the relatively low incidence of serious (CD3/4) complications (8.7 %) highlights the advantage of performing such complex surgery in a high-volume center.

Higher intraoperative blood loss and operative transfusion rates were previously reported to correlate with postoperative morbidity after gastrectomy and lymphadenectomy [11, 20]. In terms of CD grades, we found significant differences among groups for EBL and transfusion rates. Patients with greater CD grades had a greater EBL. In the CD grading system, transfusion is classified as a grade 2 morbidity, which was why the transfusion rate was highest in our CD1/2 group. Generally, a higher blood loss reflects increased surgical difficulty and correlates with a higher transfusion rate. For the same level of surgical complexity, gastrectomy could be more difficult in patients who received PCT or PCRT because of peri-tumoral fibrosis, edema, or a bulky tumor mass. These factors are known to increase the need for surgical technique and experience. Independent of other factors related to postoperative morbidity, the surgical technique and quality are definitely crucial determinants of outcome. Meticulous manipulations during surgery should reduce trauma, operative blood loss, and ultimately morbidity.

In recent years, certain factors derived from routine laboratory investigations have been reported to manifest prognostic values in predicting the outcomes for patients with AGC and MGC. These factors include white blood cell and neutrophil counts, NLR, PLR, GPS, and PNI [14, 21, 22]. Importantly, Jiang et al. [23] reported that the severity of postoperative complication could influence the survival time for patients with gastric cancer, thereby suggesting the possibility of a direct link between the severity of postoperative morbidity and long-term prognostic factors. However, in our study, all laboratory findings, inflammation-based prognostic scores, and PNI did not differ among groups. The discrepancy is quite possibly because of the PCT or PCRT, as the baseline parameters no longer represented the patient’s actual preoperative status, and the preoperative parameters could have been altered to varying degrees. Therefore, the above factors do not appear to be useful for predicting the postoperative morbidity for patients who received PCT or PCRT.

Limitations of this study include the relatively small number of patients and the natural drawbacks associated with all retrospective studies. There was substantial heterogeneity among patients and interventions. Firstly, patients with serious preoperative AEs tended to be under intensive clinical observations and may have received therapeutic interventions, which may have influenced postoperative morbidity. Secondly, the extent of surgery differed among patients. The surgical extent itself can influence postoperative morbidity, and should be well defined in a future study. Thirdly, the PCT and PCRT had different systemic and local effects, and each specific regimen also had unique toxicities. The variable treatments and regimens may have led to differing physiological alterations, even under the same AE grade. Fourthly, there were a number of patients who received preoperative treatment with PCT or PCRT but failed to subsequently proceed on to surgery. Data regarding the exact number of these patients nor the reasons why they did not subsequently proceed on to surgery was not included within the current study analysis. Therefore, had these individuals proceeded on to surgery after receiving preoperative treatment with PCT or PCRT, the observed degree and severity of postoperative complications that occurred in the overall study group could have been substantially different. However, there is no realistic way for us to make any such inferences into how preoperative AEs in this particular group of patients may have impacted upon the overall postoperative complications observed in the entire study group if this group of patients had theoretically proceeded on to surgery. Lastly, despite the limitations of our study, it is our belief that our use of both the CTCAE system for classifying AEs and the CD grading system for classifying postoperative complications allowed for minimizing any subjectivity to the analysis process of the data included within the current study.

In summary, for patients with AGC and MGC who underwent gastrectomy and lymphadenectomy, this study provided supportive evidence favoring the use of PCT or PCRT. The CTCAE grades of preoperative AEs did not correlate with the CD grades of postoperative complications. The higher EBL and transfusion rate noted in patients with complications emphasize the importance of meticulous manipulations during surgery to reduce postoperative morbidity.