Prognosis and Survival in patients with Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the outcome after colorectal surgery and to try to find possible ways to improve staging and treatment, especially in patients with stage I and II colonic cancer. The first part of this thesis describes the outcome and quality of life in patients with colorectal cancer. Chapter 2 evaluated long-term survival in patients who underwent pulmonary resection for metastases of colorectal cancer. Patients with untreated metastatic disease have a median survival of less than 10 months and a 5-year survival of less than 5%.In a highly selected group of patients surgical intervention is the therapy of choice. In our series, the actuarial 5-year survival was 25%, and the disease-free survival was 18%. The two-year overall survival for patients with solitary lesions was 70% against 50% for patients with multiple lesions. In Chapter 3 we investigated the outcome of surgery in elderly patients (>75 years) with colon cancer in order to determine the best treatment strategy. In our series, the five-year survival rate of patients treated with curative resection was 62% in the younger group (