Preoperative chemoradiotherapy despite a moderate increase in acute toxicity and no impact on overall survival significantly improves local control and is recommended for T3-4, N0-2, M0 adenocarcinoma of the middle and distal rectum.

Despite improvement in treatment for hepatic metastases, age and extent of disease remain limiting factors for surgical resection and palliative chemotherapy.

To comply with current rules for adjuvant chemotherapy, surgeons must provide pathologists with at least eight lymph nodes for optimal N+/N- dichotomization to reduce the risk of misclassification and understaging.

METHODS.number of lymph nodes required to determine whether a tumor is lymph node negative.

No abstract

Background-Over the past 20 years there have been many changes in the management of rectal cancer. Their impact on the overall population is not well known. Aims-To determine trends in manage-

No abstract

Specific plasma filtration reduced the leucocyte number to < 104 leucocytes/l. The quality of plasma was not altered by the additional step of specific plasma filtration.