Complete Clinical Response after Chemoradiotherapy in Rectal Cancer: A Crossroad

Operation is the standard of care after neoadjuvant chemoradioterapy. Therefore a nonoperative management (W&W) has been proposed as an option for patients who achieve a complete clinical response by exclusive chemoradiotherapy. This approach is still investigational and we compared outcomes between patients in this group with those who had a complete pathologic response after surgical resection to address whether W&W approach has an oncologic efficacy in terms of overall survival, disease-free survival, local relapse, and distant relapse, and also whether it should be implemented in clinical practice.
Source: Journal of the American College of Surgeons - Category: Surgery Authors: Tags: Colon and rectal surgery Source Type: research