Background: A majority of patients with rectal cancer and metastasis are not eligible to curative treatment because of an extensive and unresectable metastatic disease. Primary tumor resection is still debated in this situation. Rectal surgery treats or prevents the symptoms and avoids the risk of acute complications related to the primary tumor. Several studies on colorectal cancers seem to show interesting results in terms of survival in favor to the resection of the primary tumor. To date, no randomized trial or even a prospective study has assessed the impact of primary tumor resection on overall survival in patients with colorectal cancer with unresectable metastasis. All published studies were retrospective and included colon and rectal cancers. Rectal cancer is associated with specific problems related to the rectal surgery. Surgery is more complex, and may be source of more morbidity and postoperative functional dysfunctions (stoma, digestive, sexual, urinary) than colic surgery. On the other hand, symptoms related to the progression of rectal tumor are often very disabling: pain, rectal syndrome.
Methods/design: GRECCAR 8 is a multicentre randomized open-label controlled trial aimed to evaluate the impact on survival of the primary tumor resection in rectal cancer with unresectable synchronous metastasis. Patients must undergo upfront systemic chemotherapy for at least 4 courses before inclusion. Patients with progressive metastatic disease during upfront chemotherapy will be excluded from the study. Patients will be randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to Arm A: primary tumor resection followed by systemic chemotherapy versus Arm B: systemic chemotherapy alone. Primary endpoint will be overall survival measured from the date of randomization to the date of death or to the end of follow-up (2 years). Secondary endpoints will include progression-free survival, quality of life, toxicity of chemotherapy, response of the primary tumor and metastatic disease to chemotherapy, postoperative morbidity and mortality, rate of patient not eligible for postoperative chemotherapy (arm A), primary tumor related complications and rate of emergency surgery (arm B). The number of patients needed is 290.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrial.gov: NCT02314182.