Purpose. To study the characteristics and prognostic significance of preoperative magnetic resonance imaging- (MRI-) assessed circumferential margin (CRM) in rectal cancer.Methods. Patients underwent preoperative high resolution pelvic MRI, followed by resection of primary tumor. The relationship between MRI-assessed CRM and pathological CRM (pCRM) was studied, and survival analysis was used to determine the prognostic significance of MRI-assessed CRM.Results. Of all the 203 patients, the total accuracy of MRI-assessed CRM for predicting involvement of pCRM was 84.2%, sensitivity was 50%, and specificity was 86.8%. Anterior tumors were more possible to assess involvement of CRM by MRI, while the false positive rate was significantly higher than lateral or posterior tumor (87.5% versus 50%,p=0.0002). The 3-year local recurrence, disease-free survival, and overall survival rates were 35.6%, 58.1%, and 85.2% in patients with involved mrCRM, compared with 8.9%, 78.9%, and 92.3% in patients with clear mrCRM. In multivariate analysis, MRI-assessed CRM found an independent risk factor for local recurrence, with a hazard ratio of 3.49 (p=0.003).Conclusions. High resolution MRI was accurate to assess CRM preoperatively, while anterior tumor should be assessed more cautiously. Involvement of mrCRM was significantly associated with local recurrence regardless of pCRM status.
Magnetic resonance imaging of rectal cancer on the evaluation of preoperative staging and detection of postoperative local recurrence.
