Associations between the primary colorectal tumor budding score and the histological growth pattern of peritoneal metastases: A pilot study

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Background Tumor budding (TB) has recently emerged as a prognostic marker for primary colorectal cancer (CRC), and histological growth pattern (HGP) is a prognostic marker for colorectal liver metastases (LM) and peritoneal metastases (PM). The main objective of this study was to evaluate potential correlations between the TB score of a primary CRC and the HGP of PM from that CRC. Methods Monocentric, retrospective study including patients who underwent surgery for primary CRC with synchronous or metachronous PM requiring complete cytoreductive surgery (CRS). TB score and HGP were assessed from pathology slides and categorized as low, intermediate, and high TB score for the primary tumor (PT), and as dominant (>50 %) pushing or infiltrating HGP for PM. Results Twenty-four patients were included in the study, 14 women and 10 men, with a median age of 67 years. Twelve patients (50.0 %) had low TB score (0–4 buds), 10 patients (41.7 %) had lymph node involvement (pN+), and 8 patients (33.3 %) had synchronous PM. Nine patients (37.5 %) had a dominant pushing HGP and 15 patients (62.5 %) a dominant infiltrating profile. There were no significant associations between the TB score of the primary CRC and the HGP of the PM. Conclusions No significant correlation was found between the TB score of the PT and the HGP of the PM. Consequently, this work suggests that patients with a high TB CRC do not have an increased likelihood of having PM with an infiltrative profile, despite both being poor prognostic factors.