Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Jul 24, 2023; 14(7): 259-264
Published online Jul 24, 2023. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v14.i7.259
Relationship between anal cancer recurrence and cigarette smoking
Kevin R McMahon, Nicholas Gemma, McKenzie Clapp, Patricia Sanchez-Montejo, Joseph Dibello, Erica Laipply
Kevin R McMahon, Nicholas Gemma, McKenzie Clapp, Patricia Sanchez-Montejo, Joseph Dibello, Erica Laipply, Department of General Surgery, Summa Health System, Akron, OH 44304, United States
Author contributions: McMahon KR designed and performed the research and wrote the paper; Gemma N helped write and revise the report; Dibello J assisted with data curation and editing of the report; Clapp M assisted with data curation and editing the report; Sanchez-Montejo P assisted with data analysis and editing the report; Laipply E designed the research and supervised the report.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Summa Health System Institutional Review Board (Approval No. 21176).
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to inclusion in the cancer registry used in this review.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report having no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Statistical code and dataset available from the corresponding author at kevin.mcmahon88@outlook.com. Consent was not obtained, but the presented data are anonymized and risk of identification is low.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Kevin R McMahon, MD, Doctor, Department of General Surgery, Summa Health System, 55 Arch Street, Akron, OH 44304, United States. mcmahonkr@summahealth.org
Received: February 23, 2023
Peer-review started: February 23, 2023
First decision: March 28, 2023
Revised: May 10, 2023
Accepted: June 13, 2023
Article in press: June 13, 2023
Published online: July 24, 2023
Processing time: 145 Days and 14.1 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Despite the occurrence of approximately 50000 new cases of anal cancer per year and the clear link with smoking, very few studies have examined the relationship between smoking status and treatment outcome. It has already been shown that there is a link between anal cancer and smoking. This paper goes further and showed that there was an increased risk of recurrence in patients who smoke and have a history of smoking. This serves as a foundation for future research to examine modifications to the current treatment approach for patients with anal cancer.

Research motivation

Investigating the relationship between cigarette smoking status and anal cancer treatment outcome.

Research objectives

The main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between smoking status and outcomes for patients with anal cancer.

Research methods

A total of 95 patients were included in this data, making it the second largest study to examine the impact of smoking on anal cancer treatment outcomes. The patients were similar between the groups (never smokers, former smokers, and current smokers) in regards to important factors such as clinical stage group, race, and sex. Former and current smokers had a higher recurrence rate compared to never smokers. There was no difference in the mortality, non-response rate, or time to death between the groups. Unfortunately, data did not include human papilloma virus status, which would be an important area to include for future research.

Research results

There was an increased risk of anal cancer recurrence in patients who currently smoke and have a history of smoking.

Research conclusions

This study was the second largest study examining the relationship between treatment outcome and smoking status in patients with anal cancer. Although this data was limited in its scope, it contributed further to the limited body of evidence that smoking increases risk of recurrence of anal cancer.

Research perspectives

Future research should examine the impact of smoking cessation on treatment outcomes for patients with anal cancer as well as the role of adjuncts to standard chemoradiation in the treatment of anal cancer.