The effects of surgical trauma on colorectal liver metastasis

Excerpt

The majority of cancer mortality is associated with metastatic disease. Therefore, determining a strategy to decrease the time to metastasis after surgery may increase patient survival and quality of life. Indeed, many studies have shown no significant difference between open and laparoscopic resection of colon cancer [3, 4]. However, the long-term incidence of metastasis after laparoscopic versus open colon resection has not been reported. Previous studies demonstrated that increased trauma leads to increased growth of tumors in mice [1, 2]. We therefore investigated whether the extent of operative trauma has an impact on tumor metastasis in a murine colon cancer metastasis model. …