Elsevier

Surgery

Volume 159, Issue 4, April 2016, Pages 1099-1112
Surgery

Stomach
Trends in the use and impact of neoadjuvant chemotherapy on perioperative outcomes for resected gastric cancer: Evidence from the American College of Surgeons National Cancer Database

Poster presentation at the American College of Surgeons 2015 Scientific Forum, Chicago, IL, October 4–8, 2015.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surg.2015.11.004Get rights and content

Background

Standard of care for patients with advanced gastric cancer includes administration of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) before resection. This study assesses the pattern of use and impact of NAC on perioperative outcomes in US medical centers.

Methods

Using the American College of Surgeons National Cancer Database, 16,128 patients underwent gastrectomy for cancer from 2003 to 2012. Treatment groups were categorized as NAC or no NAC (ie, adjuvant chemotherapy and surgery only). Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to estimate trends in utilization and impact of treatment on perioperative outcomes.

Results

Of patients undergoing gastrectomy, 36.6% received NAC and 63.4% did not receive chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting. Patients who received NAC were more frequently younger, male, white, privately insured, with fewer comorbidities, and treated at an academic center (all P < .0001). After controlling for demographics, comorbidities, and tumor-related factors, patients who received NAC had a postoperative duration of stay 0.43 days shorter than patients who did not receive chemotherapy (5.79 vs 6.22 days; P = .050). They had a 36% lower odds of 30-day mortality (odds ratio, 0.64, P < .0001) but nonsignificant lower odds of 90-day mortality. Use of NAC increased annually, with the greatest increases seen in academic facilities and in the Northeast and North Central United States.

Conclusion

With concerns regarding the toxicity of NAC, these findings suggest that NAC is not associated with worse postoperative outcomes. In light of evidence touting the benefits of NAC, its adoption as a component in the multimodality care of gastric cancer is slowly increasing, although use of NAC remains poor overall.

Section snippets

Data

This study was a retrospective cohort study using tumor registry data collected between 2003 and 2012 in the National Cancer Database (NCDB), a joint effort by the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society. After securing approval in December 2014, access was obtained to this database, which currently captures approximately 80% of the cancer cases in the United States.

Our study population was restricted to patients who underwent definitive

Patient characteristics

Patients with surgically resectable gastric cancer who underwent definitive surgery between 2003 and 2012 were included in the study. The analysis cohort included 16,128 patients after excluding patients for which data was missing. Of these remaining patients, 5,909 underwent NAC and 10,219 received either adjuvant chemotherapy or surgery only without additional chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting.

Descriptive statistics are shown in Table I. Patients who underwent NAC were generally

Discussion

Strengthened by a solid foundation of level I evidence, the use of NAC for surgically resectable advanced gastric cancer has become the standard of care in the United States.9, 16, 17, 18, 22 Both in theory and in practice, NAC is associated with better patient outcomes, including tumor downstaging, better R0 resection rates, and improved patient survival. Because the majority of evidence originates from trials conducted in Europe and East Asia, missing from contemporary literature is an

References (30)

  • M. Yamamoto et al.

    Surgical management of gastric cancer: the East vs West perspective

    J Gastrointest Oncol

    (2015)
  • J. Wong et al.

    Gastric cancer surgery: an American perspective on the current options and standards

    Curr Treat Options Oncol

    (2011)
  • R. Schirren et al.

    Adjuvant and/or neoadjuvant therapy for gastric cancer? A perspective review

    Ther Adv Med Oncol

    (2015)
  • NCCN clinical practice guidelines in oncology. Gastric Cancer

    (2015)
  • B. Panigrahi et al.

    Medullary thyroid cancer: are practice patterns in the United States discordant from American Thyroid Association guidelines?

    Ann Surg Oncol

    (2010)
  • Cited by (29)

    • Union is strength: Textbook outcome with perioperative chemotherapy compliance decreases the risk of death in advanced gastric cancer patients

      2022, European Journal of Surgical Oncology
      Citation Excerpt :

      However, only 10.5 % of patients received NAC. Adopting NAC as a component in the multimodal treatment of GC remains poor, even though NAC is not associated with worse postoperative course [26], which is consistent with the results of our study. Our findings are comparable to other studies investigating TO in GC13,14,17, as shown in Table 4.

    • Assessing Malnutrition Before Major Oncologic Surgery: One Size Does Not Fit All

      2020, Journal of the American College of Surgeons
      Citation Excerpt :

      A cancer-specific definition of malnutrition would allow for more targeted application of prehabilitation. As the treatment paradigms for several foregut cancers have shifted toward the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and chemoradiation,19-21 there are increasing windows of time in the preoperative setting for patients to participate in prehabilitation programs. Unfortunately, the neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens for foregut cancers are associated with a loss of muscle mass and worse postoperative outcomes.22-24

    • Preoperative Chemoradiation Therapy Does Not Increase Risk of Anastomotic Leak in Patients With Gastric Cancer

      2017, International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics
      Citation Excerpt :

      These strategies are now established options for the treatment of resectable gastric cancer in the United States (5). Most notably, the use of preoperative chemotherapy has significantly increased over the past decade; according to the most recent reports, approximately 50% of patients treated for resectable gastric cancer at academic institutions in the United States receive preoperative chemotherapy (6). Nonetheless, which preoperative treatment regimen is best remains unclear.

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    Financial Disclosures: None.

    Disclaimer: The National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) is a joint project of the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society. The CoC's NCDB and the hospitals participating in the CoC NCDB are the source of the de-identified data used herein; they have not verified and are not responsible for the statistical validity of the data analysis or the conclusions derived by the authors.

    View full text