Pre- and Post-operative FOLFOX Based Therapy for Patients With Colorectal Cancer With Liver Involvement

Although early stage, localized colon and rectal cancers are associated with 5 year survival rates of nearly 90%, only a minority of patients present with localized disease. Unfortunately, at the time of their initial presentation, approximately 35% of patients with colon or rectal cancer have metastatic disease. Nearly two thirds of these patients with stage IV disease have evidence of extrahepatic spread and have a median overall survival rate of 8-10 months in the absence of further treatment. Even with the most intensive chemotherapeutic regimens, the median overall survival for these patients ranges from 12 months to 20 months. However, a small subset of patients with stage IV disease has isolated hepatic metastatic disease and can undergo resection. The patients with completely resected liver metastases enjoy a significantly higher overall five-year survival, which is as high as 58% in carefully selected patients. Ten-year overall survival has been reported in 22% of patients. Despite this improvement, the five-year disease-free survival for these patients is at best 35%, with hepatic recurrences occurring in 46%. The fact that adjuvant chemotherapy improves the three-year survival rate for stage II disease and five-year survival rates for stage III disease implies that it can treat micrometastatic disease in some fraction of patients. Because micrometastatic disease is likely the cause of the high recurrence rate in patients who undergo liver resection, there is a clear biologic rationale for using postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy after liver resection. Although this strategy is a common practice in many centers, no convincing data that this improves survival have been reported. A large randomized phase III trial (EORTC 40983) examining this question is currently ongoing and effect on survival has not yet been reported. Given that systemic chemotherapy after liver resection remains of unproven benefit at the present time, many have wondered if preoperative treatment might have more promise in improving recurrence rates.