Anal cancers compromise only 1.5% of all digestive tumors. At present, concurrent radiochemotherapy (RT-CT) is the treatment of choice for most of these lesions.
Objective: To collect and analyze clinical data from the medical records of all consecutive patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCCAC) treated by the Oncology Section in 20 years.
Patients and methods: The medical records of 108 patients with SCCAC were reviewed: 64% were women, mean age was 57.6 years (27-85), only 1 patient was HIV(+).
Results: Initial treatment: 87 patients were treated with RT-CT (81%), 5 CT only, 2 RT only, 8 local resection and 6 abdominoperineal resection (APR). 1) Patients initially treated with RT-CT: cobalt therapy was given to 76% of pts and linear accelerator was used in 24% of patients. 24% of patients received Mitomycin C based CT (modified Nigro), 66% Cisplatin based CT and 10% 5FU alone; 66% had clinical complete response (CCR) (26% of them relapsed). Median follow up was 2.16 years (1 month-15.5 years), median time to progression was 11.8 months and overall survival was 76.7% at 3 years (CI 95%: 65.2-87.7). 2) Patients initially treated with local resection: 6 patients NED and 2 relapsed (1 had CCR after RT-CT). 3) Patients initially treated with APR: 5 with curative intent (4 had local recurrence), and 1 was palliative. 4) Surgical rescue after RT-CT in 6 patients with curative intent (4 APR and 2 local resections), and in 15 patients was palliative (2 APR and other surgeries in 13).
Conclusions: Our group is pioneer in the use of Cisplatin based RT-CT for the treatment of patients with SCCAC. Complete response rate and overall survival at 3 years, were similar to those reported by international data. As this is probably one of the largest series of SCCAC in Argentina, we hope that this analysis of our data would be a starting point to develop prospective clinical trials.