Clinicopathologic Comparison of High-Dose-Rate Endorectal Brachytherapy versus Conventional Chemoradiotherapy in the Neoadjuvant Setting for Resectable Stages II and III Low Rectal Cancer
Table 2
Clinical outcomes broken down by EBT, 3DRT, and IMRT groups with statistical comparison. EBT: endorectal brachytherapy; 3DRT: 3D conformal radiotherapy; IMRT: intensity-modulated radiotherapy; RT: radiotherapy; CEA: carcinoembryonic antigen.
Clinical outcome
EBT
3DRT
IMRT
Time to surgery from RT start (mean ± SD days)
<0.001
Time to surgery from RT end (mean ± SD days)
0.038
Post-RT CEA (median (range) ng/mL)
3.2 (1.1–18.3)
3.9 (1.4–67.8)
1.9 (0.5–12.3)
0.41*
Change in CEA pre-RT post-RT (median (range) %)
−20 ( to +18)
−40 (−83 to +300)
−12 (−91 to +20)
0.36*
No. with grade 1 toxicity (%)
4 (57)
14 (100)
9 (82)
0.025
No. with grade 2 toxicity (%)
1 (14)
8 (57)
2 (18)
0.056
No. with grade 3 toxicity (%)
1 (14)
1 (7)
1 (9)
0.87
No. who underwent sphincter-preserving surgery (%)
6 (86)
13 (93)
10 (91)
0.87
No. with postoperative complications (%)
4 (29)
4 (36)
2/7 (29)
0.90
No. alive at 6 months post-RT/total (%)
7 (100)
14 (100)
11 (100)
1.0
No. with local recurrence at 6 months post-RT (%)
0 (0)
0 (0)
0 (0)
1.0
No. with distant metastasis at 6 months post-RT (%)
0 (0/7)
1 (7)
1 (9)
0.73
*Medians and ranges are given to better represent the data, but statistical comparison was performed among means.
