Impact of a simple intervention that improves colon cancer lymph node yield and assessement

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e15058-e15058
Author(s):  
L. Kowalczyk ◽  
P. Shah ◽  
T. George ◽  
L. Lu ◽  
G. Sarosi ◽  
...  

e15058 Background: The National Quality Forum has endorsed the 12 lymph node (LN) benchmark as a quality metric. Currently, less than 40% of institutions meet this requirement. The purpose of this study was to determine whether implementation of a simple pathology template with dedicated fields for LN reporting led to an increase in the number of colon cancer resections where >12 LNs were reported. Methods: A simple pathology template, derived from the College of American Pathology, using standardized terminology and dedicated fields for LN reporting was implemented in August 2007. Using a pre and post- test design, all consecutive pathology cases were retrospectively reviewed. Inclusion criteria consisted of all stage 0-IV colon cancer patients who underwent surgical resection at a single Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The primary outcome was the percentage of cases in which >12 LNs were assessed between the pre and post-template group. Age, gender, anatomic location, and stage were also collected. Statistical comparisons were made using chi-square and Fisher's exact t-test. Results: 111 pre-template and 71 post-template cases were analyzed. The majority of patients were Caucasian (74%) males (97%). There were no significant differences between the two groups (see Table 1 ), however there was a trend towards more right-sided colon cancers in the pre-template group. 51% of all pre-template pathology reports evaluated >12 LNs compared to 68% of post-template reports (33% improvement in LN yield; p=0.03). Conclusions: Examination of >12 LNs has important therapeutic and prognostic implications in colon cancer patients. Use of a standardized pathology template with dedicated fields for LN reporting is a simple intervention that can increase yield of LN reporting. This can have a significant impact for institutions striving to reach the 12 LN quality metric. [Table: see text] No significant financial relationships to disclose.

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Orsenigo ◽  
Giulia Gasparini ◽  
Michele Carlucci

Many colorectal resections do not meet the minimum of 12 lymph nodes (LNs) recommended by the American Joint Committee on Cancer for accurate staging of colorectal cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate factors affecting the number of the adequate nodal yield in colorectal specimens subject to routine pathological assessment. We have retrospectively analysed the data of 2319 curatively resected colorectal cancer patients in San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, between 1993 and 2017 (1259 colon cancer patients and 675 rectal cancer patients plus 385 rectal cancer patients who underwent neoadjuvant therapy). The factors influencing lymph node retrieval were subjected to uni- and multivariate analyses. Moreover, a survival analysis was carried out to verify the prognostic implications of nodal counts. The mean number of evaluated nodes was 24.08±11.4, 20.34±11.8, and 15.33±9.64 in surgically treated right-sided colon cancer, left-sided colon cancer, and rectal tumors, respectively. More than 12 lymph nodes were reported in surgical specimens in 1094 (86.9%) cases in the colon cohort and in 425 (63%) cases in the rectal cohort, and patients who underwent neoadjuvant chemoradiation were analysed separately. On univariate analysis of the colon cancer group, higher LNs counts were associated with female sex, right colon cancer, emergency surgery, pT3-T4 diseases, higher tumor size, and resected specimen length. On multivariate analysis right colon tumors, larger mean size of tumor, length of specimen, pT3-T4 disease, and female sex were found to significantly affect lymph node retrieval. Colon cancer patients with 12 or more lymph nodes removed had a significantly better long-term survival than those with 11 or fewer nodes (P=0.002, log-rank test). Rectal cancer patients with 12 or more lymph nodes removed approached but did not reach a statistically different survival (P=0.055, log-rank test). Multiple tumor and patients’ factors are associated with lymph node yield, but only the removal of at least 12 lymph nodes will reliably determine lymph node status.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 3601-3601
Author(s):  
Alexander C Chacon ◽  
Alexa D. Melucci ◽  
Nicholas A. Ullman ◽  
Paul Burchard ◽  
Anthony S. Casabianca ◽  
...  

3601 Background: A minimum of 12 lymph nodes are required during colectomy to accurately stage colon cancer. Prior studies in stage II colon cancer patients demonstrate association of inadequate lymph node examination (LNE) with worse overall survival (OS). No large-scale analogous studies related to LNE have been completed in stage I colon cancer patients. We evaluated patients with stage I colon cancer to determine the association between lymph node yield and OS. Methods: We reviewed the National Cancer Database between 2004-2015 to identify patients with pathologic stage I colon cancer (pT1N0 or pT2N0) who underwent definitive surgical resection. Patients who received radiation therapy or had missing values were excluded. Clinical and demographic characteristics were analyzed. Based on LNE, patients were stratified into 4 cohorts (LNE, 0-5, 6-11, 12-19, 20+) and 2 cohorts (0-11, 12+). Univariable and multivariable analyses were performed to identify variables associated with OS. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were computed to compare the cohorts. Results: We included 81,909 patients for analyses. Median age at diagnosis was 69. A majority were female (51.1%), white (83.8%), received care in a community cancer program (59.5%), and had a Charlson-Deyo score of 0 (66.6%). Only 0.7% of patients had a margin positive resection with a 2.5cm median tumor size. Patients were similarly split between pT1 and pT2. Suboptimal LNE was noted in 27.8% of patients. Patients with LNE were distributed - 10.7% (0-5), 17.1% (6-11), 43.4% (12-19) and 28.9% (20+). Postoperative 30-day mortality was 1.9%. 521 (0.7%) received systemic therapy. Ten-year survival in patients with 0-5 LNE was 52.8% compared to 60.1% with 20+ LNE. On multivariable analyses, patients aged ≥ 69, male sex, increasing tumor size (quartile), pT2 staging and a higher Charlson-Deyo score independently predicted worse OS (p < 0.001). LNE categories were significantly associated with OS (p < 0.001) (Table). On regrouping into 0-11 and 12+ LNE groups, 0-11 LNE group predicted worse OS (HR 1.22, p < 0.001). On multivariable analysis, the above variables continued to show similar association with OS (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that lymph node yield is associated with overall survival in patients with stage 1 colon cancer undergoing surgical resection. Furthermore, patients with suboptimal lymph node yield are associated with an inferior overall survival compared to those with optimal lymph node yield. Moreover, this study finds that a large number of patients ( > 25%) continue to have suboptimal lymph node yields. Future efforts should focus on improving the lymph node yield with optimal efforts by the surgeon and pathologist. Future studies should examine the role of systemic therapy in patients with inadequate lymph node yield.[Table: see text]


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (4_suppl) ◽  
pp. 25-25
Author(s):  
Kevin Sing ◽  
Valerie Tran ◽  
Donna McClish ◽  
Khalid Matin

25 Background: There have been reports implicating underweight status as well as obesity with lower survival in colorectal cancer patients, but data has been inconsistent. Methods: In this retrospective observational study, we gathered pre-treatment data on BMI and other co-morbidities from 423 colon cancer patients who underwent surgical resection (stages I to III) or were metastatic at diagnosis (stage IV) at VCU Medical Center from 2005 to 2018 and analyzed their survival outcomes. Results: Compared to patients with a normal BMI, patients with underweight status (BMI < 18.5) have a trend towards higher all-cause mortality (HR 1.66, 95% CI 0.67-4.12). Patients with overweight BMI (25-29.9) and obese BMI ( > 30) have a trend towards improved mortality (HR 0.67, 95% CI 0.46-0.98) (HR 0.75, 95% CI 0.53-1.07) respectively. The p-value was 0.0675. We also found that pre-existing diabetes mellitus is associated with increased all-cause mortality (HR 1.43, CI 1.03 to 1.98, p < 0.05), as well as the use of aspirin at diagnosis (HR 1.60, CI 1.16 to 2.21, p < 0.05). Conclusions: Our results are similar to previous findings that patients with underweight status have worse mortality outcome, suggesting the importance of nutritional status prior to starting treatment. We also found that overweight and obese patients have trends towards improved survival compared to normal weight patients. Future focus can be directed to see whether overweight or obesity status past diagnosis affect survival trends. Aspirin use at diagnosis in our study population is associated with worse mortality outcome; literature is conflicting with outcomes and pre-diagnosis aspirin use. Our findings are similar for both locoregional colon cancers as well as metastatic disease. Research should be directed at seeing what kind of interventions such as nutrition or rehabilitation can be used to ameliorate the increased mortality trend in the underweight status group of patients.


2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas A. Rieger ◽  
Frances S. Barnett ◽  
James W.E. Moore ◽  
Sumitra S. Ananda ◽  
Matthew Croxford ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haishan Lin ◽  
Hongchao Zhen ◽  
Kun Shan ◽  
Xiaoting Ma ◽  
Bangwei Cao

Abstract Immunotherapy is currently the most advanced anti-tumor treatment approach. The efficacy of anti-tumor immunotherapy is closely related to the tumor immune microenvironment, including immune cells, infiltration of immune factors, and expression of immune checkpoints. At present, the biomarkers for predicting the efficacy of colon cancer immunotherapy do not cover all colon cancer patients suitable for immunotherapy. In this study, TCGA database was used to identify tumor genotypes suitable for anti-tumor immunotherapy. We found that some of the MSS/pMMR populations, that were initially considered unsuitable for immunotherapy, might actually be suitable. In APC-wt/MSS colon cancer, the expression of PD-1, PD-L1, CTLA4 and CYT(GZMA and PRF1)were increased. Based on calculations done by ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithms, the ImmunoScore and the proportion of CT8+ T cell infiltration is increased in these patients. Enrichment analysis was done to screen signaling pathways involved in immune response, extracellular matrix, and cell adhesion. Tumors from 42 colon cancer patients, including 22 APC-mt/MSS and 20 APC-wt/MSS, were immunohistochemically evaluated for expression of CD8 and PD-L1. And APC-wt/MSS tumors showed significantly higher expression of CD8 and PD-L1 than APC-mt/MSS tumor. Based on the results, we found that some colon cancers of APC-wt/MSS are classified by Tumor Immune Microenvironment types (TIMTs) TMIT I. So that we speculate that APC-wt/MSS colon cancer patients could benefit from anti-tumor immunotherapy.


2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (9) ◽  
pp. 1172-1175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Bembenek ◽  
Ulrike Schneider ◽  
Stephan Gretschel ◽  
Joerg Fischer ◽  
Peter M. Schlag

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangjian Zheng ◽  
Xiaodong Chen ◽  
Min Li ◽  
Chunmeng Li ◽  
Xian Shen

Abstract Background: Surgery combined with chemo-radiotherapy is a recognized model for the treatment of gastric and colon cancers. Lymph node metastasis determines the patient's surgical or comprehensive treatment plan. This analytical study aims to compare preoperative prediction scores to better predict lymph node metastasis in gastric and colon cancer patients.Methods: This study comprised 768 patients, which included 312 patients with gastric cancer and 462 with colon cancer. Preoperative clinical tumor characteristics, serum markers, and immune indices were evaluated using single-factor analysis. Logistic analysis was designed to recognize independent predictors of lymph node metastasis in these patients. The independent risk factors were integrated into preoperative prediction scores, which were accurately assessed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.Results: Results showed that serum markers (CA125, hemoglobin, albumin), immune indices (S100, CD31, d2–40), and tumor characteristics (pathological type, size) were independent risk factors for lymph node metastasis in patients with gastric and colon cancer. The preoperative prediction scores reliably predicted lymph node metastasis in gastric and colon cancer patients with a higher area under the ROC curve (0.901). The area was 0.923 and 0.870 in gastric cancer and colon cancer, respectively. Based on the ROC curve, the ideal cutoff value of preoperative prediction scores to predict lymph node metastasis was established to be 287. Conclusion: The preoperative prediction scores is a useful indicator that can be applied to predict lymph node metastasis in gastric and colon cancer patients.


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