The study, published in the July issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, suggested that endoscopic resection and surveillance could be a feasible option regardless of the histologic character of the tumor involved. The study authors supported the use of endoscopic resection due to the mortality rate of the alternative treatment, oncologic colorectal resection.
The study, led by Alexander Meining, MD, and his colleagues at Technischen Universitat Munchen in Munich, studied 474 patients who underwent endoscopic resection for T1 colorectal cancers between 1974 and 2002. All patients had T1 cancers, and 161 underwent surgery with oncologic resection and 313 underwent endoscopic procedures.
Patients were reassessed between Jan. 2003 and Sept. 2004 and were classified according to outcome. The authors found that overall, 39 patients (or 10 percent of the total) had a poor outcome during surgery or follow-up, including 17 non-surgical patients who underwent endoscopic resection.
The study found that lymphatic vessel invasion carried the highest odds ratio for a subsequent poor outcome on follow-up.
Read the Internal Medicine News report on endoscopic resection.
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