Objective: To investigate the risk factors for the prognosis in patients with node-negative rectal cancer.
Methods: Clinicopathological characteristics of 117 patients with lymph node-negative rectal carcinoma undergoing curative rectectomy from January 2005 to December 2008 were retrospectively analyzed.
Results: The overall 5-year survival rate was 91.5%. The univariate analysis revealed that tumor size(χ(2)=8.422,P=0.004), invasive depth(T staging, χ(2)=9.448,P=0.024), cell differentiation(χ(2)=26.571,P=0.000), pathologic type(χ(2)=4.712,P=0.030) and preoperative level of carcinoembryonic antigen(χ(2)=4.131,P=0.042) had significant effects on the survival. In multivariate analysis, the independent prognostic factors for these patients were tumor size (Wald=5.286,P=0.022), cell differentiation (Wald=7.172, P=0.007) and invasive depth (T staging, Wald=5.741, P=0.017).
Conclusion: For node-negative rectal cancer patients, tumor size, poor differentiation and invasive depth are important markers to evaluate their prognosis.