Abstract
Purpose: Unresectable rectal cancer has a grave prognosis. regardless of the therapy used and median survival is less than 1 rear. Also, it is reported by many authors that $50-80\%$ of unresectable lesions were rendered resectable by radiation therapy and the median survival time for the completely resected patients were better than that of the unresected patients. So we analyzed retrospectively our data for the better treatment outcome in these patients. Materials and MEthods:From 1980 to 1992, 45 patients with initially unresectable tumors in the rectum were treated with radiation therapy with/without surgery in Department of Radiation Oncology, Yonsei Cancer Center 10 MV radiation and multiple field technique (box or AP/PA) were used. The total dose was 28-70 Gy and median dose was 48 Gy. We evaluated the lesion status at 45-50 Gy for operability. If the lesions appeared to be resectable, the Patients were operated on 4-6 weeks after radiation therapy. But if the lesions were still fixed, the radiation dose was increased to 60-65 Gy. Results: For all patients, the 2-year actuarial survival was $13.3\%$ and median survival was 9.5 months. Of 6 patients who had received less than 45 Gy, only $17\%$ of patients responded, but in the patients who had received more than 45 Gy, $60\%$ of response rate was achieved Six of the 24 patients$(25\%)$ underwent surgical resections following RT. For patients undergoing curative resection. the two-rear survival was $50\%,$ but that of the patients without resection was $9.5\%$ (p<0.01). Survival of patients with complete response following RT was $50\%$ at 2 years. Survival of patients with partial response, stable disease and progressive disease after RT was $13.4\%,\;15.4\%,\;0\%$ respectively (P<0.05). Conclision: Our data suffests that the efforts which can increase the response rate and aggressive surgical approach are needed to achieve the better local control and survival in unresectable rectal cancers.