Additional Chemotherapy After Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy in Patients With Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer

Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT) has been used as standard treatment modality in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) because of increased local control, enhanced sphincter preservation, and less toxicity.NCRT has enhanced down-staging of tumor and reduced local recurrence. However, survival benefit of NCRT has not been demonstrated and the rate of distant metastasis was still reported as high as 30%.

Patients with pathologic complete remission (pCR) after NCRT have shown excellent survival benefit. We inferred that additional chemotherapy during the resting period could enhance the pCR rate. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of an additional 4-week chemotherapy with capecitabine after the conventional 6-week NCRT in patients with LARC.