Outcomes of chemoradiotherapy with 5-Fluorouracil and mitomycin C for anal cancer in immunocompetent versus immunodeficient patients

Abstract

Purpose: Information is limited as to how we should treat invasive anal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in patients with chronic immunosuppression, since the majority of clinical studies to date have excluded such patients. The objective of this study is to compare treatment outcomes in immunocompetent (IC) versus immunodeficient (ID) patients with invasive anal SCC treated similarly with combined modality therapy.

Methods and materials: Between January 1999 and March 2007, a total of 36 consecutive IC and ID patients received concurrent chemoradiotherapy using three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy with infusional 5-fluorouracil and mitomycin C. The IC and ID groups consisted of 19 and 17 patients, respectively, with 14 human immunodeficiency virus-positive (HIV+) and 3 post-solid organ transplant ID patients. There were no significant differences in tumor size, T stage, N stage, chemotherapy doses, or radiation doses between the two groups.

Results: With a median follow-up of 3.1 years, no differences were found in overall survival, disease-specific survival, and colostomy-free survival. Three-year overall survival was 83.6% (95% CI = 68.2-100) and 91.7% (95% CI = 77.3-100) in the IC and ID groups, respectively. In addition, there were no differences in acute and late toxicity profiles between the two groups. In the human immunodeficiency virus-positive patients, Cox modeling showed no difference in overall survival by pretreatment CD4 counts (hazard ratio = 0.994, 95% CI = 0.98-1.01). No correlation was found between CD4 counts and the degree of acute toxicities.

Conclusion: Our data suggest that standard combined modality therapy with three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy and 5-fluorouracil plus mitomycin C is as safe and effective for ID patients as for IC patients.