Purpose: The combination of chemotherapy and surgery holds promise for improving CRC patient prognosis. We evaluated the pathological impact of chemotherapy on primary lesions and lymph node (LN) metastases retrospectively.
Methods: Sixteen CRC patients with synchronous liver metastasis underwent a radical operation between March 2005 and August 2007. Eight of the 16 cases (surgery group) were operated on for the primary lesion without chemotherapy and another 8 cases (chemotherapy group) were operated on after chemotherapy with FOLFOX (median: 8 courses).
Results: Five of the 8 patients in the surgery group were found to have pathological LN metastasis (62.5%; N0 37.5%, N1 37.5%, N2 25%). However, only 2 of the 8 patients in the chemotherapy group were found to have LN metastasis (25%; N0 75%, N1 25%, N2 0%). The ratio of LN metastasis (number of metastatic LNs/resected LNs in total) was 11.1% in the surgery group, but it was 4.8% in the chemotherapy group. Necrotic areas were widely detected in the LN specimens of the chemotherapy group. The percentage of lymphatic (ly) and vascular (v) invasion in the primary lesions was smaller in the chemotherapy group (ly 12.5% vs. 25.0%) than in the surgery group (ly 62.5% vs. 50.0%). The patients in the chemotherapy group had no significant adverse effects and did not show an worse survival rate overall than the surgery group.
Conclusions: A promising effect of chemotherapy on the status of LN metastasis and vessel invasions at the primary site was observed in the patients who responded to FOLFOX.