Clinical Outcomes and Prognostic Factors in Gastric Carcinoma Patients with Curative Surgery Followed by Adjuvant Treatment: Real-World Scenario.

BACKGROUND A wide range of adjuvant treatment regimens exist in gastric carcinoma patients which include chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and/or both either sequential or concurrent. The study aimed to assess the benefit of adjuvant sequential chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy for operable gastric cancers and evaluate the prognostic factors associated with clinical outcomes. METHODS Patients of stage IB-III gastric carcinoma who underwent radical surgery followed by adjuvant treatment from January 2013 to December 2016 were analyzed retrospectively. Survival was computed using Kaplan-Meier method and prognostic factors were analyzed in multivariate analysis using Cox progression hazard model. A P value < 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. RESULTS A total of 108 patients were identified with a median follow-up of 31.7 months (range: 6-96). Seventy-two percent of the patients received adjuvant sequential chemoradiation (N = 77) and 28% of patients received chemotherapy alone. The median survival was 26 months (95% CI: 23.09-28.90). Overall survival (OS) rates for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years were 88.9%, 57.4%, 40.7%, 28.8%, and 20.4%, respectively. Five-year OS for stage-IB, II, and III was 75%, 45%, and 8.3%, respectively (p = 0.023). Surgical margin positivity (9.5% vs. 26.9%, p = 0.042), signet-ring cell histology (6.5% vs. 25.8%, p = 0.00), and adjuvant sequential chemoradiation (p = 0.002) showed a significant impact on survival outcomes and proved as independent prognostic factors. CONCLUSION The present study demonstrated that survival in gastric carcinoma is influenced by the stage of disease and surgical margins. In locally advanced patients, radical surgery followed by sequential chemoradiation based on a doublet/triplet regimen was an independent prognostic factor for survival. Majority of patients in our set-up presented in locally advanced stage, curative resection followed by adjuvant sequential chemoradiation was an independent prognostic factor for survival.