In the case of cancer, death is usually not due to the primary tumor itself but due to dissemination. Analysis of the circulating tumor cells (CTCs), i.e., cells responsible for a formation of metastases, should provide information useful for the management of cancer patients, fulfilling the objectives of predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine (PPPM). Despite promising results, the decisions on stage of disease and how to guide the adjuvant treatment still do not include results of CTC assessment. We want to describe two major reasons why the recent diagnostic value of CTC analysis is not sufficient for clinical use. The first reason arises from the biological nature of the tumor itself and the second reason is associated with an interdisciplinary status of CTC diagnostics in the sense that it is neither a theme purely for pathologists nor for haemato-oncologists nor clinical biochemists. We anticipate that there are at least three areas where CTCs can be useful for clinical practice. The first is monitoring of treatment efficacy of cancer patients. The second is a molecular characterization of captured CTCs for targeted treatment, and the third is a cultivation of captured CTCs for drug sensitivity testing. All of these approaches allow researchers recognize and respond to changes of phenotype of cancer cells during disease progression and introduce PPPM into clinical practice.

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<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common kidney tumor. If feasible, metastasectomy is preferably indicated in metastatic disease. <b><i>Objective:</i></b> The aim of this study was to determine the outcome of patients after pulmonary metastasectomy (PM). <b><i>Methods:</i></b> PM for ccRCC was performed in 35 patients in the period of January 2001–2019. Clinical characteristics, type of surgery, histopathology results, and follow-up data were recorded. Progression-free survival (PFS) after PM and overall survival (OS) were defined as outcome endpoints. <b><i>Results:</i></b> A total of 77 PMs were performed in 35 patients after nephrectomy for ccRCC. The mean size of pulmonary metastasis was 19.0 mm (4–90). With a median follow-up after PM of 79.2 months, the 3- and 5-year OS rates were 63.5 and 44.9%, respectively. The only statistically significant prognostic factor affecting both PFS (<i>p</i> = 0.019) and OS (<i>p</i> = 0.015) was the dimension of pulmonary metastases. <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> The prognosis of metastatic ccRCC is generally poor, particularly in cases of larger size of metastasis. PM might improve the individual prognosis of patients with lung metastasis even in cases with higher number of metastases, bilaterality, synchronous metastasis, or a short progression-free interval after nephrectomy.

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Introduction:The surgical therapy of selected secondary pulmonary tumors, including both solitary and multiple or bilateral tumours, is currently a generally accepted therapeutic procedure demonstrably extending the long term survival of these patients. Purpose: The purpose of the present study is a ten-year retrospective analysis of a group of patients who underwent surgery due to pulmonary metastases of various primary tumors. Methods: In 2000-2009, 87 patients (of which 44 were male with a median age of 64 years) with secondary pulmonary tumors underwent surgery at the departments of the authors of this study. Solitary metastases were found in 60 patients, multiple metastases in the remaining patients, while 13 patients had bilateral metastases. The median disease-free period from surgery of the primary tumor was 31 months. Results: In total, 74 unilateral and 13 bilateral surgeries were performed in one or two periods. The most common type of surgery included anatomical pulmonary resections (32 procedures), wedge resections (29 procedures) and laser excisions (24 procedures). In total, the radical resection was performed in 156 metastases. Post-operative morbidity was 17.2 % with zero mortality. A proportion of 50.6 % of operated patients survived after resection of metastases with median survival of 39 months. The overall three-year and fi ve-year survivals in the group were 57 % and 38 %, respectively. A proportion of 35.6 % of patients live after resection of metastases without disease progression, and the median is 15 months. Conclusion:The achieved results confi rm the positive role of pulmonary metastasectomy in the therapy of disseminated cancer disease (Tab. 1, Fig. 5, Ref. 34 Hematogeneous pulmonary metastases are generally considered as a sign of advanced generalization of malignant disease. Up to one third of malignant tumors have pulmonary metastases, and in most of them the lungs are even the fi rst site of dissemination. Nevertheless, in a signifi cant number of patients, the pulmonary affl iction is stopped or eliminated during the dissemination of metastases, and these patients may benefi t from radical resection of metastases (1, 2). Surgical therapy of the selected secondary pulmonary tumors, not only solitary but also multiple or bilateral, is today generally the accepted therapeutic procedure which demonstrably extends long term survival of these patients with acceptable peri-operative morbidity and mortality. The purpose of the following study is a retrospective analysis of a group of patients who underwent surgery due to pulmonary metastases of various primary tumors over a period of ten years. Material and methodsIn 2000-2009 we performed surgery on 87 patients with secondary pulmonary tumors. Only patients who had undergone a radical resection of the primary tumor, were free from other extrapulmonary metastases, their pulmonary metastases appeared to be radically removable according to the pre-operative examinations as for the number and location, and the benefi t of surgery...