The effect of age on survival in patients with peritoneal metastases from colorectal cancer who were treated with CRS-HIPEC

Discrepancies exist in the literature about the association of age and survival of patients with colorectal peritoneal metastases (CPM) who undergo cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CRS-HIPEC). We retrospectively analysed data from 811 patients with CPM aged 16 – 83 years, who were treated with CRS and HIPEC at the Peritoneal Malignancy Institute (PMI), UK, between 2000 and 2024. We ran repeated Cox proportional hazard (PH) and Kaplan-Meier survival analyses with preclinical covariates and peritoneal cancer index (PCI) covariates, to determine if associations of age with mortality hazard would be modified when the form of “age” was changed. More than 20 sets of analyses were run, each using a different form of age (continuous age, and age bins/groups e.g., <50 vs. ≥50 years). We found that within our population of pre-selected colorectal cancer patients, age at the time of CRS-HIPEC was not associated with mortality in any adjusted analyses. Early onset or late onset ages did not significantly affect survival once PCI score was included as a covariate. Discrepancies in age/survival associations reported in different studies may be due to lack of adjustment for important confounders. Our study suggests patients of any age with CPM, may benefit from CRS-HIPEC treatment.