Factors Affecting the Risk of Death in Patients with Rectal Cancer: An Analysis in the Presence of Competitive Risks

The incidence of rectal cancer is increasing in developing societies, especially in younger age groups. The aim of this study was to evaluate the factors affecting the survival of patients with rectal cancer in the presence of competing risks.

In this retrospective cohort study, the data of 121 patients with rectal cancer during 2001-2017 were studied. Death related to cancer progression was considered as the interest outcome and other causes of death were considered as competing risks. Cause-specific and sub-distribution hazard models were used to investigate the factors affecting patient survival in the presence of competing risk.

The mean (SD) age of the patients was 53.4 (13.9) years and 68 patients (56.2%) were male. The results of log-rank test showed that sex, age, metastasis, type of first treatment, rate of penetration into intestinal wall, tumor location, number of lymphomas involved and tumor size had significant effects on the patient survival (P<0.05). Based on cause-specific and sub-distribution hazard models, tumor stage, lymph node metastasis, and tumor grade had significant effects on death hazard due to the cancer progression (P<0.05).

Due to the need to consider competing risks, the results of both competing risk methods showed that tumor grade, lymph node metastasis and stage increased the instantaneous hazard and hazard of cancer death. Therefore, to determine the specific risk factors for each cause of death in the survival analysis, competing risk methods should be used if there is more than one cause of death.