These data suggest that bevacizumab can be safely administered until 5 weeks before liver resection in patients with metastatic CRC without increasing the rate of surgical or wound healing complications or severity of bleeding. To our knowledge, they are also the first to show that neoadjuvant bevacizumab does not affect liver regeneration after resection.

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Formerly a disease with a limited duration of survival, metastatic colorectal cancer has become a potentially curable situation. More than two thirds of patients have disease limited to one organ, most often the liver. Very effective chemotherapy combinations, often including targeted agents, have resulted in high response rates, so that surgical resection of metastases is possible in a considerable number of patients. Most uncertainties regarding the use of bevacizumab and cetuximab in the neoadjuvant setting can be answered by recently generated data, which do not support the suspicion of an increased risk of a surgical approach for a cure if simple prerequisites are fulfi lled. This article highlights the points to remember if a curative approach is intended in patients with metastatic colorectal disease.

1 Welsh FKS, Tekkis PP, O'Rourke TR, John TG, Rees M. A multifactorial model to quantify the risk of a positive (R1) margin following hepatic resection for metastatic colorectal cancer.