Abstract
Introduction: Colorectal cancer is one of the most common types of cancer. Despite better surgical techniques and the use of neoadjuvant therapy, some patients develop a local recurrence. This project thesis aims to describe the disease of a group of patients that received surgical treatment for their locally recurrent rectal or sigmoid cancer at the Norwegian Radium Hospital in the time period 2007-2018. Among others, I will investigate how many develop a local re-recurrence or distant metastasis following the operation and also for how long the patients that receive this surgical treatment tend to stay alive. Methods: Information about the patients was collected using the clinical programs DIPS and MedInsight. We registered a number of chosen parameters regarding their primary disease, recurrent disease and events taking place in the follow-up. Further, we analysed this information using the statistical software SPSS. Results: The 5-year overall survival for 131 patients without synchronous metastases was 43 % and 5-year progression-free survival was 20 %. The 30-day mortality was 2,2 %. After surgery for recurrence, 73 % of the patients developed local re-recurrence, distant metastases or both. The most common localisation of distant metastases was the lungs. Median time between surgery for the primary tumour and surgery for the recurrence was 29 months. Discussion and conclusion: Surgical treatment of local recurrence can prolong the life of many patients and also cure part of them. However, this treatment often has complications, and in a few cases it can even lead to death. Therefore, it is important to make good decisions in a multidisiplinary team (MDT) on who should receive this treatment and who should not.