Prognosis of One-stage Hepatectomy for Bilobar Colorectal Metastases

It is not rare that two-stage hepatectomy for multiple bilobar colorectal liver metastases (CLM) be left incomplete because of disease progression or technical reasons. One-stage hepatectomy seems a feasible and safe alternative, however, long-term results are lacking. This study aims to provide evidence that one-stage hepatectomy compelling tumor exposure provides adequate long-term results with low risk of local recurrences.

Eligibility Criteria The prospectively recruited cohort of patients herein analysed is the result of a policy for which those patients considered resectable and presenting 4 or more lesions, bilobar CLM were systematically approached in a one stage operation.

Patients were considered unresectable once there was concomitance of more than 3 lung metastases, diffuse peritoneal carcinomatosis, and/or extra-hilar lymph node metastasis.

Outcome measures The primary outcome was the feasibility on an intention-to-treat basis. To this purpose we studied the ratio between the number of patients surgically explored and those who effectively received resection.

The secondary outcome was the safety of the procedure. To this purpose we studied morbidity, mortality, amount of blood loss, rate of blood transfusions, and postoperative trend of liver function tests.

The tertiary outcome measure was the reliability of the procedure from an oncological standpoint. For this purpose we studied the following:

1. the rate of true local recurrence (cut-edge) after a minimum follow-up of 6 months;
2. the long-term follow-up, analysing the overall survival (survival after surgery), time to recurrence (survival without recurrence), and time to liver recurrence (survival without liver recurrence).
3. the overall survival compared with that based on an intention-to-treat criterion also including the outcome of those patients who met the inclusion criteria but resulted unresectable on exploration.

Patients with multiple (> or = to 4) and bilobar colorectal liver metastases

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Inclusion Criteria:

Those patients considered resectable and presenting 4 or more CLM, involving both liver lobes are systematically approached in a one stage operation.

Exclusion Criteria:

Patients carriers of more than 3 lung metastases, and/or diffuse peritoneal carcinomatosis, and/or extra-hilar lymph node metastasis