TO THE EDITOR:

We read with interest the original paper by Cai et al., which investigated the role of preoperative radiotherapy in early-onset LARC by comparing the clinicopathological characteristics of early- and late-onset locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC), as well as short- and long-term treatment outcomes. The authors concluded that patients with early-onset LARC may not benefit from neoadjuvant radiotherapy to the same extent as patients with late-onset LARC, suggesting that its use may need to be re-evaluated [1]. We are very grateful to the authors for their efforts. Nevertheless, we would like to offer our own insights into this great finding by the authors.

致编辑：

我们饶有兴趣地阅读了 Cai 等人的原始论文，该论文通过比较早发性局部晚期直肠癌 (LARC) 和晚发性局部晚期直肠癌 (LARC) 的临床病理学特征以及短期治疗，研究了术前放疗在早发性 LARC 中的作用。和长期治疗结果。作者得出的结论是，早发性 LARC 患者可能无法像晚发性 LARC 患者那样从新辅助放疗中获益，这表明其使用可能需要重新评估[1]。我们非常感谢作者的努力。尽管如此，我们还是想对作者的这一伟大发现提出我们自己的见解。