Adjuvant Chemotherapy After Preoperative Chemoradiation for Rectal Cancer

Standard therapy for rectal cancer is neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy. However, there is ongoing controversy about the benefit of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy, particularly in patients who achieve a pathologic complete response (PCR) to neoadjuvant chemoradiation and resection. Now, two groups of investigators have conducted retrospective, propensity score–matched cohort studies to address this issue.

Dossa and colleagues used data from the Canadian National Cancer Database to assess 2455 rectal cancer patients who achieved a PCR after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and surgery from 2006 to 2012. Of these patients, 680 (28%) received postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy and 1775 (72%) received…