The use of adjuvant chemotherapy is not associated with recurrence or cancer-specific death following curative resection for stage III rectal cancer: a competing risks analysis

Table 4 Association between adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) and death due to rectal cancer and between other variables independently associated with administration of AC and death due to rectal cancer, after adjustment for the competing risk of death due to causes other than rectal cancer

	Category^a	Censored n = 160	Died of non-RC n = 59	Died of RC n = 119	Bivariate hazard ratio (95% CI)	Wald P	Multivariable hazard ratio (95% CI)	Wald P
Adjuvant	No	35	41	54	REF	0.074		0.230
chemotherapy	Yes	125	18	65	0.72 (0.50–1.03)		0.77 (0.49–1.18)	0.230
Year of resection	1995–1999	18	17	44	0.75 (0.63–0.89)	0.001	0.77 (0.65–0.92)	0.004
	2000–2004	33	23	27
	2005–2009	41	12	30
	2010–2014	24	5	16
	2015–2019	44	2	2
Age	< 75 years	142	30	95	REF	0.787		0.268
Age	≥ 75 years	18	29	24	0.94 (0.60–1.48)		0.74 (0.43–1.26)	0.268
Peripheral vascular disease	No	159	53	110	REF	0.077		0.073
Peripheral vascular disease	Yes	1	6	9	1.90 (0.93–3.85)		1.92 (0.94–3.91)	0.073
Intra-abdominal or pelvic abscess/haematoma	No	145	54	112	REF	0.381		0.203
Intra-abdominal or pelvic abscess/haematoma	Yes	15	5	7	0.71 (0.33–1.53)		0.61 (0.29–1.31)	0.203

Italicized P values indicate P significance at ≤ 0.05
RC rectal cancer, CI confidence interval
^aIn each cell, first line is the reference category coded 0, second line is the category of interest coded 1

ISSN: 1477-7819