Abstract: Objective To investigate the pathological characteristics related to postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy of elderly rectal cancer and analyze the prognostic factors. Methods Clinical data of 200 elderly patients with rectal cancer treated in our hospital during Jan. 2007 and Jan. 2010 were retrospectively reviewed. Patients age, gender, complaints, duration of symptoms, preoperative(carcino-embryonic antigen CEA), date of surgery, surgical procedure, TNM stage, pathological differentiation, tumor location, size, lymph node metastasis, tumor invasion, number of examined lymph nodes, rehabilitation plan and time, postoperative recurrence and metastasis were analyzed. Kaplan-Meier method was employed to calculate the survival rate, Long-Rank test was adopted to analyze single prognostic factor, and Cox regression analysis was performed to assess the multi- factors. Results The postoperative 3-year and 5-year survival rates were 80.63% and 73.75%. Tumor diameter >5 cm, poor tumor differentiation, TNM stage Ⅲ, lymph node metastasis, and preoperative CEA >10 ng/mL were the independent risk factors of prognosis. Conclusion Tumor diameter>5 cm, low tumor differentiation, TNM stage Ⅲ, lymph node metastasis, and preoperative CEA>10 ng/mL are the independent risk factors affecting the prognosis, and patients with lymph node metastasis and preoperative CEA >10 ng/mL had better receive adjuvant chemotherapy after operation.

Key words: Rectal noeplasm, Adjuvant chemotherapy, Prognosis, Pathological features