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Is There a Role for Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Rectal Cancer?

  • Personalized Medicine in Colorectal Cancer (CMS Rocha-Lima, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Colorectal Cancer Reports

Abstract

Adjuvant chemoradiotherapy trials demonstrated a reduction in local failure and an increase in survival of patients with locally advanced rectal cancer submitted to upfront surgery. The standard-of-care shifted to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy when the German Rectal Cancer Study Group Trial demonstrated the benefit of neoadjuvant compared to adjuvant fluoropyrimidine chemoradiotherapy in lower rates of local failure, lower toxicity in patients optimally resected with total mesorectal excision (TME), and higher rate of sphincter-sparing surgery. Overall survival (OS) was equivalent in both arms. The benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy after preoperative chemoradiotherapy has not been clearly demonstrated in randomized trials. This review will discuss the role of fluoropyrimidine-based and oxaliplatin-based adjuvant chemotherapy in patients treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

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Conflict of Interest

Gabriel Prolla has received compensation from Roche, Amgen, Merck, and Sanofi-Aventis for service on advisory boards and as a guest speaker.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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  1. Instituto do Câncer do Hospital Mãe de Deus, Rua Costa 40–3º andar, Porto Alegre, RS, 90110-270, Brazil

    Gabriel Prolla

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Correspondence to Gabriel Prolla.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Personalized Medicine in Colorectal Cancer

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Prolla, G. Is There a Role for Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Rectal Cancer?. Curr Colorectal Cancer Rep 11, 70–77 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11888-015-0261-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11888-015-0261-x

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