P W Owens, M Saeed, N McCawley, P Loughlin, D E Kearney, J P Burke, D A McNamara, S M Sahebally
BACKGROUND: Long-course neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT), followed by surgery after an interval of 6-8 weeks, represents standard of care for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). Increasing this interval may improve rates of complete pathological response (pCR) and tumour downstaging. We performed a meta-analysis comparing standard (SI, within 8 weeks) versus longer (LI, after 8 weeks) interval from NCRT to surgery. METHODS: PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases were searched up to 31 August 2022...
March 22, 2024: Surgeon: Journal of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Ireland