The role of surgical resection following imatinib treatment in patients with metastatic or recurrent GIST.

10550 Background: Several retrospective studies have suggested that surgical resection of residual lesions could be beneficial if resection was done after disease control (partial response or stable disease) with imatinib in patients with metastatic or recurrent GIST. However, the benefit of surgical resection has not been proven yet compared to imatinib alone. Therefore, we compared the outcomes of surgical resection of residual lesions after imatinib (SI group) with those of imatinib alone (IM group) in patients with metastatic or recurrent GIST controlled with imatinib treatment. Methods: A total of 134 patients with metastatic or recurrent GIST who showed at least 6 months of disease stabilization or response to imatinib were included in this retrospective analysis. Patients were categorized into SI (n=42) or IM (n=92) group. To reduce the selection bias, propensity scores and inverse-probability-weighting (IPTW) adjustment were used in the outcome analysis. Results: Patient and tumor characteristics ...