Optimizing the approach to patients with potentially resectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer

Abstract

Liver metastases are a common event in colorectal carcinoma. Significant advances have been made in managing these patients in the last decade, including improvements in staging and surgical techniques, an increasing armamentarium of chemotherapeutics and multiple local ablative techniques. While combination chemotherapy significantly improves median patient survival, surgical resection provides the only prospect of cure and is the focus of this review. Interpretation of published work in this field is challenging, particularly as there is no consensus to what is resectable disease. Of particular interest recently has been the use of neoadjuvant treatment for downstaging and downsizing disea..