Management Considerations for the Surgical Treatment of Colorectal Cancer During the Global Covid-19 Pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 pandemic requires to conscientiously weigh "timely surgical intervention" for colorectal cancer against efforts to conserve hospital resources and protect patients and health care providers. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: Professional societies provided ad-hoc guidance at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic on deferral of surgical and perioperative interventions, but these lack specific parameters to determine the optimal timing of surgery. METHODS: Using the GRADE system, published evidence was analyzed to generate weighted statements for stage, site, acuity of presentation, and hospital setting to specify when surgery should be pursued, the time and duration of oncologically acceptable delays, and when to utilize nonsurgical modalities to bridge the waiting period. RESULTS: Colorectal cancer surgeries-prioritized as emergency, urgent with imminent emergency or oncologically urgent, or elective-were matched against the phases of the pandemic. Surgery in COVID-19-positive patients must be avoided. Emergent and imminent emergent cases should mostly proceed unless resources are exhausted. Standard practices allow for postponement of elective cases and deferral to nonsurgical modalities of stage II/III rectal and metastatic colorectal cancer. Oncologically urgent cases may be delayed for 6(-12) weeks without jeopardizing oncological outcomes. Outside established principles, administration of nonsurgical modalities is not justified and increases the vulnerability of patients. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic has stressed already limited health care resources and forced rationing, triage, and prioritization of care in general, specifically of surgical interventions. Established guidelines allow for modifications of optimal timing and type of surgery for colorectal cancer during an unrelated pandemic.

Robotic versus laparoscopic versus open colorectal surgery: towards defining criteria to the right choice.

OBJECTIVE: Analysis of various parameters related to the patient, the disease, and the needed surgical maneuvers to develop guidance for preoperative selection of the appropriate and the best approach for a given patient. Rapid advances in minimally invasive surgical technology are fascinating and challenging alike. It can be difficult for surgeons to keep up with new modalities that come on to the market place and to assess their true value, i.e., distinguish between fashionable trends versus scientific evidence. Laparoscopy established minimally invasive surgery and has revolutionized surgical concepts and approaches to diseases since its advent in the early 1990s. Now, with robotic surgery rapidly gaining traction in this high-tech surgical landscape, it remains to be seen how the long-term surgical landscape will be affected. METHODS: Review of the surgical evolution, published data and cost factors to reflect on advantages and disadvantages in order to develop a broader perspective on the role of various technology platforms. RESULTS: Advocates for robotic technology tout its advantages of 3D views, articulating wrists, lack of hand tremor, and surgeon comfort, which may extend the scope of minimally invasive surgery by allowing for operations in places that are more difficult to access for laparoscopic surgery (e.g., the deep pelvis), for complex tasks (e.g., intracorporeal suturing), and by decreasing the learning curve. But conventional laparoscopy has also evolved and offers high-definition 3D vision to all team members. It remains to be seen whether all together the robot features outweigh the downsides of higher cost, operative times, lack of tactile feedback, possibly unusual complications, inability to move the operative table with ease, and the difficulty to work in different quadrants. CONCLUSIONS: While technical and design developments will likely address some shortcomings, the value-based impact of the various approaches will have to be examined in general and on a case-by-case basis. Value as the ratio of quality over cost depends on numerous parameters (disease, complications, patient, efficiency, finances).

Current status: new technologies for the treatment of patients with fecal incontinence.

Fecal incontinence is a frequent and debilitating condition that may result from a multitude of different causes. Treatment is often challenging and needs to be individualized. During the last several years, new technologies have been developed, and others are emerging from clinical trials to commercialization. Although their specific roles in the management of fecal incontinence have not yet been completely defined, surgeons have access to them and patients may request them. The purpose of this project is to put into perspective, for both the patient and the practitioner, the relative positions of new and emerging technologies in order to propose a treatment algorithm.

Preoperative versus postoperative radiotherapy for rectal cancer in a decision analysis and outcome prediction model.

PURPOSE: Reduction of local recurrences has been achieved by radiotherapy, but also by improved surgical technique (total mesorectal excision). Radiotherapy has adverse effects and cannot exceed local dose limits. Neoadjuvant radiotherapy may result in overtreatment. We aimed to define the minimum local benefit that would have to be postulated for radiotherapy in order to bring a benefit to the overall cohort. We hypothesized that saving radiotherapy as treatment for a subset of patients with high-risk tumors and local recurrences improves the outcome of the overall cohort. We sought to simulate preoperative versus postoperative radiotherapy in theoretical decision analysis model based on published recurrence rates, with overall survival being the primary end point. METHODS: Computerized literature search for studies published between 1996 and 2011, supplemented by manual review of the retrieved reference lists. RESULTS: Postoperative radiotherapy evolved as preferred strategy with cure rates of 65.6 % vs. 63.7 % for postoperative and neoadjuvant radiotherapy, respectively, and a decrease of radiation exposure to 42.9 % of the cohort. The system was sensitive to (1) the fraction of stage I cancers included in the cohort, (2) the difference between local recurrence rates (LRR) for neoadjuvant radiotherapy, adjuvant radiotherapy, or surgery-only approach, and (3) the compliance with the postoperative radiotherapy. If the surgery-only recurrence was set to the published 10 %, 13 %, and 27 %, respectively, adjuvant radiotherapy had to achieve LRR below the threshold values of 6.3 %, 8.5 %, and 18.3 % to reverse the impact of compliance. CONCLUSIONS: Radiotherapy only improves cancer-specific survival of the cohort if there is a large difference in LRR with versus without it. Routine treatment may therefore be inferior to a tailored radiotherapy regimen.

Cost-saving effect of treatment algorithm for chronic anal fissure: a prospective analysis.

Evidence-based medicine suggests that in the management of chronic anal fissure (CAF), lateral internal sphincterotomy (LIS) is far more effective than medical treatment in lowering the anal sphincter tone and curing the fissure. In the current study, we developed a treatment algorithm from topical nitroglycerin (NTG) to botulinum toxin type A (Botox [BTX]) to LIS and analyzed its cost benefit by calculating the effective and potential costs based on the treatment success and the rate of avoided surgeries. Patients presenting between November 2003 and December 2004 with CAF and symptoms for greater than 3 months were prospectively treated according to a treatment algorithm which started with (1) topical NTG, in case of failure (2) injection of BTX, thus limiting (3) surgery to those who failed both nonsurgical options or at any point chose the surgical approach. Based on the primary end points of fissure healing or surgery, we calculated the true cost (algorithm) and the potential incremental cost (BTX plus surgery or surgery in all patients, respectively). Sixty-seven patients with CAF (25 men and 42 women; median duration of symptoms, 16 weeks) were treated according to the algorithm. NTG alone was successful in fissure healing in 31 of 67 patients (46.2%). Two developed a recurrent fissure and then received BTX as part of the protocol. Of the 36 patients who failed NTG trial, 3 requested surgery; the others were treated with BTX, which was successful in 84.8%. Five patients (15.2%) failed BTX and subsequently required surgery. The overall surgery rate in the whole study group was 11.9%, whereas CAF healed in 88.1% of our patients with medical treatment alone. Cost for NTG is $10; for 100 units BTX, $528; and for outpatient surgery, $1119. The total cost for these 67 patients therefore was $33,252 ($290 for NTG, $20,580 for NTG plus BTX, $3,357 for NTG plus LIS, and $9,025 for NTG plus BTX plus LIS). If all patients had received BTX with a 15% failure rate, the total cost would have been $56,688 (70.3% cost increase). If all patients had undergone surgery as initial/only treatment, the total cost would have been $74,973 (125% cost increase). Our treatment algorithm for CAF with stepwise escalation can avoid surgery in 88% of the patients. It is highly cost-efficient and resulted in savings of 41% (compared with BTX plus LIS) and up to 70% (compared with surgery in all patients), respectively.