Emergency treatment of complicated colorectal cancer

The aim of this paper is to find evidences to suggest the best approach in patients admitted as an emergency for complicated colorectal cancer.
The medical records of 131 patients admitted as an emergency with an obstructing, perforated, or bleeding colorectal cancer to Noble’s Hospital, Isle of Man, and the Umberto I University Hospital, Rome, were retrospectively evaluated. Primary endpoints were 90-day mortality and morbidity. Secondary endpoints were length of stay, number of lymph nodes analyzed, rate of radical R0 resections, and the number of patients who had chemoradiotherapy.

The present study failed to demonstrate a clear superiority of one treatment with respect to the other, even if there is an interesting trend favoring staged resection.