scholarly journals Acute Radiation Colitis after Preoperative Short-Course Radiotherapy for Rectal Cancer: A Morphological, Immunohistochemical and Genetic Study

Cancers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 2571
Author(s):  
Magda Zanelli ◽  
Alessia Ciarrocchi ◽  
Giovanni De Petris ◽  
Maurizio Zizzo ◽  
Massimo Costantini ◽  
...  

Preoperative radiotherapy is a widely accepted treatment procedure in rectal cancer. Radiation-induced changes in the tumor are well described, whereas less attention has been given to the non-neoplastic mucosa. Our aim is to provide a detailed analysis of the morphological features present in non-neoplastic mucosa that pathologists need to be familiar with, in order to avoid misdiagnosis, when evaluating rectal cancer specimens of patients preoperatively treated with radiotherapy, especially with short-course regimen. We compared 2 groups of 95 rectal cancer patients treated preoperatively with either short-course (45 patients) or long-course radiotherapy (50 patients). Depending on the type of protocol, different histopathological features, in terms of inflammation, glandular abnormalities and endocrine differentiation were seen in the non-neoplastic mucosa within the irradiated volume. Of note, features mimicking dysplasia, such as crypt distortion, nuclear and cytoplasmic atypia of glandular epithelium, were identified only in the short-course group. DNA mutation analysis, using a panel of 56 genes frequently mutated in cancer, and p53 immunostaining were performed on both tumor and radiation-damaged mucosa in a subset of short course cases. Somatic mutations were identified only in tumors, supporting the concept that tissues with radiation-induced “dysplastic-like” features are not genetically transformed. Pathologists should be aware of the characteristic morphological changes induced by radiation. The presence of features simulating dysplasia in the group treated with short-course radiotherapy may lead to serious diagnostic mistakes, if erroneously interpreted. Next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis further validated the morphological concept that radiation-induced abnormalities do not represent pre-neoplastic lesions.

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Wang ◽  
Yiwen Long ◽  
Kun Liu ◽  
Qian Pei ◽  
Hong Zhu

Abstract Background The purpose of this study was to compare short-course radiotherapy (SC) or neoadjuvant long-course chemoradiotherapy (LC) treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer patients. Methods Patients with a diagnosis of locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) who had undergone neoadjuvant radiotherapy before surgery between 2013 and 2018 at the medical center in China were included in this study. All patients’ MRI confirmed T2N+M0 or T3-4N0-3M0 clinical stages. Patients in the SC group received pelvic radiotherapy with a dose of 5 × 5 Gy (with or without chemotherapy at any time), followed by immediate or delayed surgery. Patients in the LC group received a dose of 50–50.4 Gy in 25–28 fractions, concomitantly with FOLFOX or capecitabine-based chemotherapy, followed by surgery 4–6 weeks later. All clinical data were retrospectively collected, and long-term follow-up was completed and recorded at the same time. Results A total of 170 were eligible to participate in this study, 32 patients in the SC group, and 138 in the LC group. The median follow-up time of living patients was 39 months. The disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) rates in the SC group and LC group at 3 years, were, 84.9% versus 72.4% (P = 0.273) and 96.2% versus 87.2% (P = 0.510), respectively. The complete pathological response (pCR) rates in the SC group and LC group were, 25% versus 18.1% (the difference was not statistically significant, P = 0.375), respectively. However, the SC group had better node(N) downstaging compared to the LC group (P = 0.011). Conclusions There were no differences observed in DFS and OS between short-course radiotherapy and long-course chemoradiation, and both can be used as treatment options for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Wang ◽  
Yiwen Long ◽  
Kun Liu ◽  
Qian Pei ◽  
Hong Zhu

Abstract BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to compare short-course radiotherapy (SC) or neoadjuvant long-course chemoradiotherapy (LC) treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer patients.MethodsPatients with a diagnosis of locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) who had undergone neoadjuvant radiotherapy before surgery between 2013 and 2018 at the medical center in China were included in this study. All patients’ MRI confirmed T2N+M0 or T3-4N0-3M0 clinical stages. Patients in the SC group received pelvic radiotherapy with a dose of 5×5 Gy (with or without chemotherapy at any time), followed by immediate or delayed surgery. Patients in the LC group received a dose of 50-50.4 Gy in 25-28 fractions, concomitantly with FOLFOX or capecitabine-based chemotherapy, followed by surgery 4-6 weeks later. All clinical data were retrospectively collected, and long-term follow-up was completed and recorded at the same time.ResultsA total of 170 were eligible to participate in this study, 32 patients in the SC group, and 138 in the LC group. The median follow-up time of living patients was 39 months. The disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) rates in the SC group and LC group at 3 years, were, 84.9% versus 72.4% (P= 0.273) and 96.2% versus 87.2% (P= 0.510), respectively. The complete pathological response (pCR) rates in the SC group and LC group were, 25% versus 18.1% (the difference was not statistically significant, P=0.375), respectively. However, the SC group had better node(N) downstaging compared to the LC group (P=0.011).ConclusionsThere were no differences observed in DFS and OS between short-course radiotherapy and long-course chemoradiation, and both can be used as treatment options for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 226
Author(s):  
Karolina Vernmark ◽  
Xiao-Feng Sun ◽  
Annica Holmqvist

There is a need to personalize the treatment for rectal cancer patients. The aim of this study was to analyze therapy response and prognosis after preoperative radiotherapy in rectal cancer patients with mucinous adenocarcinoma compared to those with non-mucinous adenocarcinoma. The study included retrospectively collected data from 433 patients, diagnosed with rectal cancer in the South East health care region in Sweden between 2004 and 2012. Patients with non-mucinous adenocarcinoma that received short-course radiotherapy before surgery had better overall survival, cancer specific survival, and disease-free survival, as well as distant- and local-recurrence-free survival (p = 0.003, p = 0.001, p = 0.002, p = 0.002, and p = 0.033, respectively) compared to the patients that received long-course radiotherapy with concomitant capecitabine. The results were still significant after adjusting for sex, age, stage, differentiation, and chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant and/or adjuvant setting, except for local-recurrence-free survival that was trending towards significance (p = 0.070). In patients with mucinous adenocarcinoma, no difference in survival was seen when comparing patients that had short-course radiotherapy and patients that had long-course radiotherapy. However, none of 18 patients with mucinous adenocarcinoma treated with long-course radiotherapy had local tumor progression, compared to 7% of 67 patients with non-mucinous adenocarcinoma. The results indicate that mucinous adenocarcinoma and non-mucinous adenocarcinoma may respond differently to radiotherapy.


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