‘Weight loss’ has no negative impact on the quality of life of colorectal cancer patients

Important points:

• Weight loss and systemic therapy did not result in statistically significant differences in health-related quality of life.
• Serious adverse events occurred in twice as many patients assigned to the reduced dose regimen.

Study results show that weight loss combined with standard systemic therapy did not significantly impact overall quality of life in a cohort of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

Survey results — Published in Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network The researchers also concluded that patients assigned to the weight loss intervention had twice as many serious adverse events as patients in the standard treatment group.

Rationale and methodology

“Maintaining an adequate health-related quality of life is important in the palliative treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.” Lotte Buckelsmedical doctor, Researchers from the Department of Medical Oncology at the Radboud Institute for Health Sciences in the Netherlands and their colleagues wrote.

Lotte Buckels

Researchers studied 300 patients with multisystem metastatic colorectal cancer who received either cytoreduction and first-line palliative systemic therapy (n = 148) or standard systemic therapy alone (n = 148). We sought to prospectively evaluate the OS benefit and impact on health-related quality of life by randomly assigning patients to patients with cancer. 152).

Investigation result

Results showed no statistically significant differences in health-related quality of life or fatigue between patients assigned weight loss and systemic therapy and those assigned standard systemic therapy alone.

The researchers further observed that there were no significant differences in health-related quality of life in both treatment groups after one year of treatment.

However, results showed that patients assigned dose reduction and systemic therapy had twice the rate of serious adverse events (P ≤ .001). Researchers observed serious adverse events in 21% of patients assigned standard systemic therapy, compared with 43% of patients assigned a reduced-dose regimen.

“This may mean that the negative impact on quality of life from complications is temporary and is eventually balanced out by a reduction in tumor-related symptoms after treatment,” Dr. Buckels said. stated in a press release. “Patients may also adapt their perceptions of health-related quality of life over the course of illness and treatment.”

Future research

“Given the significant amount of complications associated with local treatment, we expected to see a greater impact on overall and durable quality of life in the experimental group,” Buckels said in the release. . “The fact that the severe side effects associated with topical therapy did not lead to a significant reduction in patients’ perceived quality of life is very interesting and warrants further investigation. These results, including the risks, [for] Comorbidities must be considered in the office to determine together with the patient the appropriate treatment for each individual. ”

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