According to new research presented at the Scientific Forum of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress 2022, colorectal cancer patients with certain clinical characteristics may benefit from more frequent chest imaging to help identify and target cancer that has spread to the lungs.
These findings have the potential to improve long-term outcomes of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.
Despite improved survival rates, colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Though rates of colorectal cancer have declined among people 65 and older, largely thanks to increased screening efforts, rates among younger adults are rising. 2 When the cancer is caught early, many patients can remain disease-free for the rest of their lives after surgical treatment, but colorectal cancer can spread (metastasize) in up to 50 per cent of patients.
One of the most common areas colorectal cancer spreads to is the lungs, affecting up to 18 per cent of patients with colorectal cancer.4 Detecting cancerous nodules in the lung early provides patients with the best outcomes, but there are no evidence-based standards for when and how often to screen colorectal cancer patients with chest CT or PET scans.
"After patients are diagnosed with colorectal cancer, many of them want to better understand what their cancer diagnosis entails in terms of their surveillance and survivorship for the rest of their life, but we currently lack data and uniform guidelines to support how often these patients should be screened with chest imaging," said co-author Mara Antonoff, MD, FACS, associate professor, thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, where she also serves as program director of education.
Anderson added, "With this study, we sought to develop a strategy that is evidence-based to determine how frequently, at what intervals, and for how long patients at risk of developing lung metastases should undergo imaging of their chest."
Dr. Antonoff specializes in thoracic surgical oncology and has a clinical interest in colorectal cancer that has spread to the lungs. She is leading a multi-institutional study, under the umbrella of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) Thoracic Surgery Oncology Group (TSOG) (TSOG 103), on developing optimal treatment strategies for colorectal cancer patients whose cancer spread is limited to the lungs.
To identify which colorectal cancer patients may benefit from early chest imaging and at what time intervals, Dr. Antonoff and an interdisciplinary team of researchers at MD Anderson - including cardiothoracic surgeons, colorectal cancer surgeons, and gastrointestinal oncologists - collaborated on this research project to investigate evidence-based surveillance guidelines for colorectal patients who are at risk of developing lung metastases.
( With inputs from ANI )
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