Management of Surgically Accessible Lymph Nodes Beyond Normal Resection Planes.

This article discusses the management of isolated metastatic lymph nodes for colon and rectal cancer. There are traditionally significant differences in how certain regions of lymph nodes for colon and rectal cancer are managed in the East and West. This has led to the development of the lateral lymph node dissection for rectal cancer and extended lymphadenectomy techniques for colon cancer. This article will evaluate the literature on these techniques and what the surgical and oncological outcomes are at this time. In addition, colon and rectal cancers can occasionally have isolated distant lymph node metastases. These would traditionally be treated as systemic disease with chemotherapy. There is consideration though that these could be treated as similar to isolated liver or lung metastases which have been shown to be able to be treated surgically with good oncological results. The literature for these isolated distant lymph node metastases will be reviewed and treatment options available will be discussed.

Association of obesity with postoperative outcomes after proctectomy.

BACKGROUND: Prior efforts evaluating obesity as a risk factor for postoperative complications following proctectomy have been limited by sample size and uniform outcome classification. METHODS: The ACS NSQIP was queried for patients with non-metastatic rectal adenocarcinoma who underwent elective proctectomy. After stratification by BMI classification, multivariable modeling was used to identify the effect of BMI class on adjusted risk of 30-day outcomes controlling for patient, procedure, and tumor factors. RESULTS: Of 2241 patients identified, 33.4% had a normal BMI, 33.5% were overweight, 21.1% were obese, and 12.0% were morbidly obese. Increased risk of superficial surgical site infection (SSI) was observed in obese (OR 2.42, 95%CI:[1.36-4.29]) and morbidly obese (OR 3.29, 95%CI:[1.77-6.11]) patients when compared to normal BMI. Morbid obesity was associated with increased risk of any complication (OR 1.44, 95%CI:[1.05-1.96]). BMI class was not associated with risk adjusted odds of anastomotic leak. CONCLUSIONS: Morbid obesity is independently associated with an increased composite odds risk of short-term morbidity following elective proctectomy for cancer primarily due to increased risk of superficial SSI.