Highlights
- •Radiologic assessment of colon cancer stage differs between dMMR and pMMR tumours.
- •pMMR tumours: nodal internal heterogeneity is associated with positive lymph nodes.
- •dMMR tumours: diameter of lymph nodes is associated with positive lymph nodes.
Abstract
Background
Neoadjuvant treatment with either chemotherapy or immunotherapy is gaining momentum
in colon cancers (CC). To reduce over-treatment, increasing staging accuracy using
computed tomography (CT) is of high importance.
Purpose
To assess and compare CT imaging features of CC between mismatch repair-proficient
(pMMR) and MMR-deficient (dMMR) tumours and identify CT features that can distinguish
high-risk (pT3-4, N+) CC according to MMR status.
Methods
Primary staging CTs of 266 patients who underwent primary surgical resection of a
colon tumour were retrospectively and independently evaluated by two radiologists.
Logistic regression analysis was performed to identify significant associations between
imaging features and positive lymph node status. Receiver operating characteristic
(ROC) curves of significantly associated features were assessed and validated in an
external cohort of 104 patients.
Results
Among pT3 tumours only, dMMR CC were significantly larger than pMMR CC in both length
and thickness (length 59.39 ± 26.28 mm versus 48.70 ± 23.72, respectively, p = 0.031;
thickness 20.54 mm ± 11.17 versus 16.34 ± 8.73, respectively, p = 0.027). For pMMR
tumours, nodal internal heterogeneity on CT was significantly associated with a positive
lymph node status (odds ratio (OR) = 2.66, p = 0.027), while for dMMR tumours, the largest short diameter of the nodes was associated
with lymph node status (OR = 2.01, p = 0.049). The best cut-off value of the largest short diameter of involved nodes
was 10.4 mm for dMMR and 7.95 mm for pMMR. In the external validation cohort, AUCs
for predicting involved nodes based on the largest short diameter was 0.764 for dMMR
tumours using 10 mm size cut-off and 0.624 for pMMR tumours using 7 mm cut-off.
Conclusion
These data show that CT imaging features of primary CC differ between dMMR and pMMR
tumours, suggesting that the assessment of CT-based CC staging should take MMR status
into consideration, especially for lymph node status, and thus may help in selecting
patients for neoadjuvant treatment.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 24, 2022
Accepted:
June 25,
2022
Received in revised form:
June 20,
2022
Received:
February 25,
2022
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
