Published online Mar 16, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i8.2429
Peer-review started: September 16, 2021
First decision: November 17, 2021
Revised: December 3, 2021
Accepted: January 22, 2022
Article in press: January 22, 2022
Published online: March 16, 2022
Processing time: 175 Days and 6.7 Hours
Peritoneal metastasis has been shown to be a poor prognostic factor in metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC). In all published literature citing the above, the patients were treated with either single or doublet first-line chemotherapy. There are no data on the prognostic significance of peritoneal carcinomatosis in patients treated with first-line triplet chemotherapy.
We have shown before that triplet first-line chemotherapy in metastatic CRC overcomes the poor prognosis of right-sidedness. We wanted to examine whether the same applies to peritoneal metastasis in CRC.
We wanted to examine the progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of patients with peritoneal vs no peritoneal metastasis treated with first-line triplet chemotherapy and to confirm the lack of a statistically significant difference in the two groups on univariate and multivariate analysis.
This was a post hoc analysis of a phase I/II trial evaluating the efficacy and toxicity of triplet chemotherapy in the first-line treatment of metastatic CRC. Patient characteristics, PFS, and OS were examined for the groups with and without peritoneal metastasis. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to include other known prognostic factors in metastatic CRC.
No statistically significant difference was found in the PFS and OS in the group with or without peritoneal metastasis. Peritoneal metastasis was confirmed not to be an independent prognostic factor in patients with metastatic CRC treated with first-line triplet chemotherapy based on multivariate analysis.
The study suggests that first-line triplet chemotherapy overcomes the poor prognostic significance of patients with metastatic CRC. This needs to be confirmed in large prospective trials.
Treatment of patients with metastatic CRC should be personalized based on prognostic clinical and molecular factors. The benefit of triplet chemotherapy might outweigh the excess toxicity in certain subgroups, such as those with peritoneal carcinomatosis.