Analysis of early postoperative complications in patients with resectable rectal cancer after neo-adjuvant chemo-radiotherapy

Background Surgery is presently playing a leading role in rectal cancer treatment, but the natural history of the disease, featured by a high local recurrence rate (30-40% until the 8090 years), suggested the possibility of using multimodal treatment regimen : radiotherapy (before, during and after surgery) possibly associated with chemotherapy [1,2]. This approach is recommended for the maority of patients with stage II (negative lymph nodes with tumor invading the muscularis) or with stage III (positive lymph nodes but without metastases after a time span). The neoadjuvant radio and chemo therapy, though having no impact on global survival rate, associated to TME reduce the local recurrence rate, provide a higher control level of systemic disease (micro metastases eradication), increase the rate of complete pathological responses, and allow a higher rate of “sphincter sparing” surgery [3,4].