Background/aims: This study aimed to determine the overall survival time and clinical characteristics affecting the outcomes in patients with resectable colorectal cancer (CRC).
Methodology: Clinical data from CRC patients who underwent surgical resections from 1994 to 2004 was analyzed retrospectively using the documented records and gastrointestinal tumor databases at the gastrointestinal institute. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to investigate the association between clinical variables and overall survival time.
Results: A consecutive series of 1.294 CRC patients were enrolled for the final analyses. The five-year survival rates were 94.1%, 80.2%, 61.7% and 23.2% of patients with stage from I to IV CRC, respectively. One hundred and seven patients (8.3%) had disease recurrence during the follow-up with a median of 50.3 months. After radical surgical resections, patients with recurrence could still expect a five-year survival rate of 44.3%. Multivariate analysis showed that patient age >60 years, infiltrative tumor type, intestinal obstruction, poor tumor differentiation, disease recurrence and late TNM stage were associated with poor survival (all p<0.05).
Conclusions: The overall postoperative survival in this series of patients with CRC was mainly affected by patient age, tumor morphology, bowel obstruction, histological grade, TNM stage and disease recurrence. For those patients with recurrence, surgical resection should be recommended primarily if the tumor is resectable.