Multicenter retrospective study of predictive value of pCR after NAC for long-term outcomes of patients with gastric cancer

Many studies have used pathologic complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) as the primary end point for short-term outcomes in gastric cancer (GC), but whether it is a good indicator for long-term outcomes is not known. A retrospective study at two universities in Shanghai (China) found that pCR was an independent prognostic factor for disease-free survival (DFS; p=0.002) and overall survival (OS; p=0.009). However, the survival benefit with pCR was present only for ypN0 tumors (p=0.001 for DFS; p=0.004 for DFS) but not for ypN+ tumors (p=0.285 for DFS; p=0.292 for OS).