Patients’ files were retrospectively reviewed and data were recorded. Characteristics of patients, who were not operated due to any reason and treated with CRT alone or CT following CRT, were assessed. Patients with stage II and III rectal cancer, according to American Joint Committee on Cancer’s (AJCC) Cancer Staging 6th edition 2002 TNM staging system (21) were included in the study. Accordingly, T3-4N0/N+ was considered locally advanced and, T3-4N0 was considered of stage II, as N+ was stage III. Preoperative evaluations were performed by thoracic,

lower, and upper abdominal computerized tomography (CT), lower abdominal (pelvic) Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and endorectal ultrasound (US) studies in all patients. Absence of distant metastasis was

confirmed by thoracic, upper, and lower abdominal CT and/or positron emission tomography-computerized tomography (PET-CT). The patients receiving CRT were administered RT in 1.8 Gy/fraction/day dosage for Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical 25 fractions, a total of 45 Gy and in addition they were given 5-fluorourasil (5-FU) 225 mg/m2/day as continuous infusion. The dosage of oxaliplatin was 50 mg/m2/day in cases who received oxaliptalin in addition to RT and 5-FU Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in CRT protocol. Capecitabine was administered with a dosage of 1,000 mg/m2 every day in cases who received capecitabine instead of 5-FU in CRT protocol. Following CRT, capecitabine Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical was administered as monotherapy with a dosage of 2,500 mg/m2/d for 14 days followed by a 7 day rest. Following CRT, CT was administered in a modified FOLFOX6

regimen was given once in 14 days, including folinic acid 400 mg/m2 + 5-FU 400 mg/m2 bolus + 5-FU 2,400 mg/m2 46 hours of infusion + oxaliplatin 85 mg/m2. Time from diagnosis to progression was defined as progression free survival (PFS) and time from diagnosis to death was defined as overall survival (OS). The statistical analyses of the data were performed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences for Windows (SPSS) Version 15.0 Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical click here software; and Kaplan-Meier Method was used for PFS and OS analyses. Results The retrospective click here analyses of 263 patients with rectal cancer were performed. 86 patients (32.6%) with stage II and 177 patients (67.4%) with stage III rectal cancer had a median age of 59 [18-85] years. The patient characteristics are presented in Table 1. Table 1 General characteristics of all patients with locally advanced stage rectal cancer Among those, 14 patients (5.3%) were determined who could not undergo surgery due to any reason, but received CRT or CT following CRT. 4 of them were women (28.6%) and 10 were men (71.4%) and the median age was 72 [42-87] years. All of these 14 patients had CRT, and additional CT was received by 2 (14.3%) patients.