The utility of adjuvant chemotherapy in the management of Small Bowel Adenocarcinoma (SBA) remains unproven and awaits the results of a large, global, prospective, phase III, randomised, controlled trial. Across the 830 million population of North America and Europe, there are approximately 3,000 patients with R0 resected and potentially cured SBA every year who would be potentially eligible for such an adjuvant chemotherapy trial.
Given the absence of good-quality and evidence-based data, it has been agreed that a trial considering adjuvant chemotherapy versus no chemotherapy was appropriate for patients with stage I-IV SBA in whom the oncologist and patient feel that the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy is uncertain. For those patients with stage I-IV SBA who, with their oncologists, feel that the potential benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy is certain (and hence are not willing to accept randomisation to the 'no chemotherapy' arm), a randomisation between single agent fluoropyrimidine versus doublet fluoropyrimidine and oxaliplatin chemotherapy will be offered. Tumour stage will be used as a stratification factor. Those patients who do not consent to be randomised will be offered registration to allow collection of demographic, clinicopathological, epidemiological and survival data, thereby making optimal use of the rare patient population available. In addition, archival Formalin Fixed Paraffin Embedded (FFPE) tissue and contemporaneous venous blood samples will be collected from every registered patient to allow molecular profiling and future translational research. A questionnaire about underlying risk factors (e.g. Crohn's disease, coeliac disease, Lynch syndrome etc) will be completed along with the other collected data on all registered patients.
The trial hypotheses are that:
- Adjuvant chemotherapy results in an improved outcome (DFS and OS) over observation alone after potentially curative R0 surgery for stage I, II, III and IV SBA
- Adjuvant fluoropyrimidine and oxaliplatin chemotherapy results in an improved outcome (DFS and OS) over fluropyrimidine alone after potentially curative R0 surgery for stage I, II, III and IV SBA.
