Colorectal cancer with synchronous lung metastases: clinical characteristics, treatment, prognosis

Objective: to evaluate the impact of cytoreductive surgery on treatment results in patients with colorectal cancer and synchronous lung metastases.

Materials and methods. This retrospective investigation analyzed the results of therapy in patients with colorectal cancer and synchronous lung metastases who had been treated in the period 2000 to 2012. The investigators studied the following indicators: the impact of cytoreductive surgery on the survival of patients with this condition, the clinical characteristics of a group of patients with isolated lung involvement, the dissimilarity of this group from a group of patients with extrapulmonary metastases, the possibility of performing complete cytoreductive surgery in patients with varying degrees of a metastatic process, and the number of patients with complications in primary tumor.

Results. The investigations included the data of 112 patients with colorectal cancer and synchronous lung metastases. Out of them, 38 (33.9 %) patients had isolated lung involvement and the latter was associated with extrapulmonary metastases in 74 (64.1 %). In 16 of the 38 patients, isolated lung metastases were regarded as resectable and complete cytoreductive surgeries were performed. The median follow-up in the examined group was 15.2 months. One- and two-year overall survival rates were 63 and 45 %, respectively. The patients with isolated lung metastases were observed to have higher 2-year overall survival rates than those with multiple metastases (63.0 and 37.5 %, respectively; p = 0.055) and there were significantly higher 2-year overall survival rates in patients after removal of primary tumors than in those who had not undergone cytoreductive surgery (21.0 and 52.5 %, respectively; p = 0.004). Two-year overall survival rates were 72.5 % in the complete cytoreductive treatment group.

Conclusion. The prognosis in the patients with colorectal cancer and synchronous lung metastases was better than that in those with isolated lung involvement and in those whose primary tumor had been removed. Complete cytoreductive surgical treatment can provide long-term survival in this category of patients.

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