Surgical Strategies in Colorectal Cancer Metastatic to the Liver

Abstract

Surgical resection remains a milestone in the treatment of colorectal metastases to the liver.

There is a distinct subset of patients who benefit from surgical resection in terms of longer survival or definitive cure.

The main effort of the surgical oncological regards the safety of the procedure and the adequacy of the recommendation.

Many studies, some of them including multivariate analysis, have shown the presence of prognostic determinants of long-term survival and prognostic indexes of the outcome after hepatectomy.

It is now accepted that liver resection should be done when the complete excision of all demonstrable tumor with clear resection margins is feasible.

Major contra-indication is represented by the presence of extra-hepatic intra-abdominal disease or of unresectable lung metastatic deposits.

There is a wide literature indicating that in very selected patients liver reresection and multiorgan synchronous or metachronous resections are beneficial.

The role of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and especially postoperative adjuvant local (intra-hepatic) and systemic chemotherapy is promising and supported by recent multicenter randomised clinical trials.