The Overall Survival and Progression-Free Survival in Patients with Advanced Adrenocortical Cancer Is Increased after the Multidisciplinary Team Evaluation

Simple Summary Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare and malignant disease with a poor prognosis in advanced disease. The complexity of ACC management requires a multidisciplinary approach, an emerging model of treatment, suitable for oncological diseases. Our study aims to determine the role of multidisciplinary team evaluation in affecting the overall survival and progression-free survival in ACC patients. We perform a retrospective analysis of ACC patients treated in Padova, with particular reference to their discussion in the multidisciplinary group of adrenal disease, definitively established in 2013 and defined as a collegial meeting between physicians involved in adrenal diseases. We describe a positive impact on survival rates in ACC patients after the multidisciplinary meeting. We aimed to evaluate the role of adrenal multidisciplinary team evaluation (MTE) in affecting the overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). We included in a retrospective monocentric study 47 patients with ACC. We divided our cohort into group 1 (without adrenal-MTE discussion, ACC diagnosis from 2004 to 2012, n = 14) and group 2 (diagnosis and beginning of treatments after 2013, all discussed in the adrenal MTE, n = 33). OS was defined by the survival between the first and the last visit, while PFS as the time from the first visit to the progression of the disease. Kaplan-Meier curves were used to compare OS and PFS between Group 1 and Group 2. Group 1(stages III-IV) (n = 10) presented a shorter median OS than Group 2(stages III-IV) (25 patients, 4 vs. 31 months, p = 0.023). Likewise, the median PFS was lower in Group 1 as compared to Group 2 (2.9 vs. 17.2 months, p < 0.001). The gain in PFS (6 months) was also confirmed in stage III-IV patients (2.9 vs. 8.7 months, respectively, for Group 1 and Group 2, p = 0.02). Group 1 presented a median PFS of 4 months, while the median PFS of Group 2 was 14.7 months (p = 0.128). In conclusion, we found a significant gain in terms of survival in patients after the MTE discussion in 2013. Therefore, ACC patients should be referred to a tertiary center, ideally from the time of diagnosis, to promptly apply all available treatments, according to the single patient's clinical history and based on multidisciplinary management.

Automated summary

The study found a significant improvement in survival rates for ACC patients after multidisciplinary team evaluation in 2013. Therefore, it is suggested that ACC patients should be referred to a tertiary center from the time of diagnosis in order to promptly apply all available treatments.