Comparison between intravenous and oral postoperative adjuvant immunochemotherapy in patients with stage II colorectal cancer

The present study was designed to retrospectively examine the efficacy of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy in 107 patients with stage 11 primary colorectal cancer who underwent curative resection. The chemotherapy regimen was intravenous 5FU/LV in 30 patients (FL-IV group) and oral UFT/PSK in 77 patients (oral group). There were no significant differences between the FL-IV and the oral group with respect to the 3-year relapse-free survival rate, 5-year relapse-free survival rate, and 5-year overall survival rate, which were 82.4 vs. 83.0% (p=0.8546), 78.8 vs. 80.0% (p=0.756), and 81.6 vs. 92.8% (p=0.1609), respectively. Grade 3 adverse events that occurred in the FL-IV group were leukopenia in one patient (3.3%), nausea/vomiting in two (6.6%), anorexia in two (6.6%), diarrhea in one (3.3%), and fatigue in one (3.3%). No grade 3 or 4 adverse events were observed in the oral group. These results suggest that the oral regimen achieved equivalent efficacy to the FL-IV regimen in patients with stage 11 colorectal cancer, while improving their postoperative quality of life.