The survival benefit of intensified full-dose XELOX chemotherapy concomitant to radiotherapy and then resting-period consolidation chemotherapy in locally advanced rectal cancer.

To evaluate the effect of an intensified capecitabine and oxaliplatin (XELOX) chemoradiation treatment followed by one cycle of consolidation chemotherapy before surgery in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). Patients with histologically confirmed, newly diagnosed, locally advanced rectal adenocarcinoma (cT3-T4 and/or cN+) were enrolled. All patients received 3-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) or intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) with a dose 50.4Gy in 25 fraction, with two cycles of concurrent XELOX chemotherapy. Thereafter, another cycle of consolidation chemotherapy with XELOX/FLOFOX was administered during the resting period after completion of concurrent chemoradiation (CRT). Tumor response, toxicities, surgical complications, and long-term clinical outcomes were recorded. From January 2011 to December 2013, a total of 96 patients were enrolled in the study. All patients completed the treatment plan of concurrent chemoradiation and consolidate chemotherapy. During concurrent chemoradiation, the incidence of grade 3/4 toxicities was leucopenia (2.1%), thrombocytopenia (4.2%), diarrhea (6.3%). 18 patients (18.8%) developed surgical complications. Pathologic complete response (pCR) was achieved in 20 (20.8%) patients. Tumor down-staging occurred in 69 (71.9%) patients and down-staging of nodes occurred in 47 (49.0%) patients. Of these 96 patients, 5-year local recurrence-free survival, metastasis-free survival, disease-free survival and overall survival rates was 98.9%, 84.7%, 83.7% and 82.1%, respectively, with a median follow-up of 4.24years. The intensified treatment paradigm of XELOX concurrent chemoradiation followed by one cycle of consolidation chemotherapy was well tolerated in our cohort and provided a promising long-term oncologic outcome, which warranted further investigation in a randomize trails.