Baseline physical functioning status of metastatic colorectal cancer patients predicts the overall survival but not the activity of a front-line oxaliplatin-fluoropyrimidine doublet

Background. No differences in response rate (RR), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and quality of life (QoL) were seen in patients randomly treated with biweekly oxaliplatin plus either fluorouracil/folinic acid or capecitabine. Methods. We investigated the independent effect of baseline clinical characteristics and physical functioning (PF) domain on RR, PFS, and OS in 310 patients who completed the EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire. Multivariate analyses stratified by treatment were performed. An exploratory analysis was done by grouping patients with a PF score superior or equal to the highest quartile (n = 111), included between the highest and the lowest quartiles (n = 99), or inferior to the lowest quartile (n = 100). The relationship between these three groups and the ECOG PS was then analysed. Results. At multivariate analysis, OS was negatively affected by the number of metastatic sites, the serum alkaline phosphatase, and the ECOG PS, while it was positively affected by the previous surgical resection of the primary tumour. Adding the baseline PF score, the number of disease sites (p < 0.0001), the serum alkaline phosphatase (p = 0.0057), and the PF (p = 0.0007) retained an independent significance, while the ECOG PS and the previous surgery were no longer significant. PF did not significantly affect PFS or RR. A good but not totally overlapping correlation was found between PF grouping and ECOG PS score. Conclusions. Baseline self-reported PF independently predicted the OS of patients. Assessment of QoL should be incorporated in randomised trials evaluating the management of patients with MCRC.