STELLAR Rectal Cancer Erratum Corrects Swapped Survival Curves in Figure 1A
A published erratum in Journal of Clinical Oncology corrects a figure-level labeling error in the five-year STELLAR trial update for locally advanced rectal cancer. The correction is narrow in scope but clinically relevant: in Figure 1A of the September 1, 2026 article, the colors assigned to the TNT and CRT curves were reversed, and the two groups in the accompanying “No. At risk (Censored)” table were also swapped.
This kind of correction does not change the underlying trial design, the patient cohort, or the study’s reported outcomes. It does, however, matter in a setting where clinicians rely on Kaplan-Meier figures to interpret long-term differences between treatment strategies at a glance. A mislabeled curve can invert the visual meaning of the figure, especially when readers are comparing time-to-event patterns across total neoadjuvant therapy and long-course chemoradiotherapy.
The corrected version has been posted as of September 25, 2026, and the authors issued an apology for the error.
Why a Swapped Curve Color Matters in Rectal Cancer Trials
In rectal cancer, treatment sequencing often shapes how clinicians think about local control, distant relapse risk, and the balance between intensification and tolerability. Visual mislabeling in a figure can distort those judgments even when the written text is accurate. Kaplan-Meier plots are not decorative; they are a compact summary of event timing, censoring, and separation between study arms. When the legend or at-risk table is wrong, the reader may assign the wrong trajectory to the wrong treatment.
That matters most in comparative oncology trials, where a single figure often becomes the fastest way for surgeons, radiation oncologists, and medical oncologists to absorb long-term data. Rectal cancer management already demands precision in anatomic staging, response assessment, and multimodality planning. A label swap in the survival display adds avoidable ambiguity to a topic where clarity is essential.
The correction also shows how a paper can be scientifically intact while still needing a precise editorial fix. In a trial update, the written interpretation may remain unchanged, but a figure error can still mislead readers who skim the visual first and the text second. For busy clinicians, that is not a trivial distinction.
What the Correction Says About Trial Reporting
The STELLAR update was presented as a five-year outcomes analysis comparing short-term radiotherapy plus chemotherapy with long-term chemoradiotherapy in locally advanced rectal cancer. This erratum does not alter those comparisons. It only repairs Figure 1A, where the curve colors for the two treatment groups had been reversed and the risk table labels were likewise inverted.
From a reporting standpoint, that is a reminder that figures need the same editorial scrutiny as the narrative. Trial plots can influence clinical memory more strongly than dense methods sections, especially when readers later cite a survival curve from recollection rather than from the paper itself. An incorrect legend can propagate confusion into slide decks, journal clubs, and secondary summaries if left uncorrected.
The timing of the correction is also straightforward: the original article appeared on September 1, 2026, and the erratum was posted on September 25, 2026. That interval suggests the mistake was caught quickly enough to limit downstream confusion, but long enough for early readers to encounter the flawed version. In oncology publishing, even a brief window can matter when a study is being shared widely across clinical teams.
One sentence captures the practical impact: the wrong color assignment could make the TNT line appear to belong to CRT, and vice versa.
Editorial Accuracy and the Bedside Meaning of Figure Corrections
For clinicians treating rectal cancer, treatment comparisons are rarely abstract. They feed into decisions about response-adapted therapy, organ preservation strategies, and how aggressively to pursue combined-modality care. In that context, an erratum correcting a swapped curve and a mislabeled at-risk table protects the interpretability of the evidence base.
The correction does not imply a flaw in the data itself. It does mean the visual representation needed to be aligned with the actual treatment arms. In survival analysis, the relationship between a line, a legend, and a risk table is foundational. If any one of those elements is wrong, even a strong study can be misread.
This is especially true when the endpoint being displayed spans five years. Longer follow-up makes treatment curves more likely to be used for clinical framing, not just academic discussion. A mislabeled figure at that stage can change how readers perceive early separation, late convergence, or censoring density, even if none of those patterns were truly different.
The corrected record now preserves the distinction between the two arms without ambiguity. For future readers, the erratum ensures that Figure 1A matches the trial’s actual treatment labeling and the at-risk counts correspond to the correct group. That is the point of a formal correction: not to rewrite the study, but to restore exactness where the visual record had drifted from the underlying analysis.
Publication Record After the Fix
The article remains indexed in Journal of Clinical Oncology with the erratum attached to the same DOI record. The publication history lists the correction date as September 25, 2026, and the notice states that the authors apologize for the error.
For readers returning to the STELLAR trial update, the key action is simple: use the corrected figure when interpreting the relative positions of the TNT and CRT curves. The written conclusions of the original article are not restated in this erratum, and no new efficacy or safety data are introduced here. The only change is the repair of a figure and its accompanying risk table, which now align with the treatment labels as intended.