Rendezvous procedures offer a safe, minimal-invasive therapeutic approach allowing the resection of benign sessile or colonoscopically inaccessible localized polyps and of early stage colon cancer.

Our findings indicate that 2.8% of all patients (12.1% of patients with recurrent disease) who underwent curative resection of colorectal cancer profit from follow-up CEA determinations. With careful observation of CEA kinetics, 6.2% (n=82) of all patients or 26.8% of patients with recurrent disease could profit from routine follow-up CEA determinations. In 9.5% of patients with recurrent disease, curative resection of relapse was achieved and these patients remained disease free for a median time of 12 months. Regular CEA measurements remain an important part of routine patient care after curative resection of colorectal cancer.

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Cine-MRI provides valid preoperative information with respect to extent, location, and strength of intraabdominal adhesions. Cine-MRI is a good alternative for diagnosing abdominal adhesions because objective findings of the scan and intraoperative findings correlate very well with each other.

This is the first study evaluating sleeve-gastrectomy in German patients. Our data indicate that sleeve-gastrectomy induces a similar metabolic improvement as malabsorptive surgery. Although metabolic improvement did not correlate with weight reduction, improvement almost exclusively occurred within the first 6 months, when significant weight reduction occurred. It is unclear whether this relates to the operative techniques or to the selection of patients.