Prognostic Value of Pretreatment HER2 Status in Gastric Cancer Patients Treated with Postoperative Chemoradiotherapy

Abstract

Our purpose was to evaluate the prognostic or predictive importance of HER2 status in gastric cancerpatients treated with postoperative chemoradiotherapy.METHODSWe retrospectively analyzed the records of 49 gastric cancer patients treated with curative intent betweenApril 2012 and January 2017; we also assessed the impact of HER2 status on prognosis and treatmentoutcomes.RESULTSDuring a median follow-up period of 14.6 months (range, 4.0-56.97 months), two patients (4%) had localrecurrence and 21 patients (43%) developed distant metastasis. We found no statistically significant differencein metastasis frequency rates between HER2 negative (-) and positive (+) patients. The medianoverall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) for the whole group were 24.9 and 24.2 months,respectively. Although there was no significant difference in OS and DFS according to HER2 status, therewas a negative trend in OS (p=0.451) and DFS (p=0.633) in HER2 (+) patients.CONCLUSIONAlthough our study did not demonstrate any statistically significant importance of HER2 status in gastriccancer patients treated with postoperative chemoradiotherapy, the median OS of 13 months in HER2(+) patients and 24.9 months for HER2 (-) patients warranted randomized trials with larger cohorts.