Postoperative Adjuvant Chemotherapy Cancel Out the Negative Survival Impact on Stage II/III Gastric Cancer Patients With Postoperative Complications

Purpose The potential additive influence of adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) on prognosis of patients with stage II/III gastric cancer (GC) who experienced complications after radical surgery is unclear.Methods The whole group was divided into a postoperative complication (PC) group and a postoperative non-complication (NPC) group, and the overall survival (OS) rate, recurrence-free survival (RFS) rate and recurrence rate were compared between the two groups of patients. Results A total of 1563 patients between January 2010 and December 2015 in our center were included in this analysis. There were 268 patients (17.14%) in the PC group and 1295 patients (82.86%) in the NPC group. The 5-year OS rate of the PC group was 55.2%, the NPC group was 63.3%; and the 5-year RFS rate of the PC group was 53.7%, the non-PC group was 58.8%. Recurrence patterns showed no significant difference between the two group (all p>0.05). Adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) significantly improved the OS and RFS rates of patients with and without PCs (both p 0.05). Stratified analysis showed that AC only improve the OS or RFS rates of stage III patients (both pConclusion AC can abolish the negative effect of PCs on the long-term survival of patients with stage III GC; for stage II patients, the above offset effect is affected by the TI. Delaying AC initiation after 6 weeks may not improve the survival of patients experienced stage II GC with complications.