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Colorectal cancer is a common and significant public health concern. The liver is the most common site of metastasis, and colorectal cancer liver metastases (CRLM) may affect up to 60% of patients at some time during the course of their disease. Approximately 25% of patients are found to have synchronous CRLM at the time of diagnosis, and these patients have a worse prognosis than those who develop metastases later in their disease course. In the absence of extrahepatic disease, resection of CRLM with negative margins along with chemotherapy can lead to a 5-year overall survival rate of up to 60%. This report presents the case of a 48-year-old man diagnosed with rectal cancer and synchronous liver metastases that a multidisciplinary tumor board initially deemed to be unresectable because of large size and insufficient future liver remnant. The patient underwent FOLFOX chemotherapy with bevacizumab and experienced conversion to resectable hepatic disease. After neoadjuvant short-course radiation treatment to the rectum, the patient underwent combined low anterior resection of the rectum and a right hepatectomy and was rendered disease-free. The management of the patient’s clinical course with correlation to the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology for Rectal Cancer is presented in this report, including discussion of the role of chemotherapy in the conversion of CRLM to resectable status, the role of surgical metastasectomy, and postoperative surveillance of patients with colorectal cancer.

Background: Patient preferences (quantity vs quality of life; present vs future health) have not been investigated in patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). The goal of this cross-sectional study was to evaluate patient values toward treatment goals and competing health outcomes among adults with NETs. Patients and Methods: Patients with well-differentiated, grade 1 or 2, advanced NETs starting a new systemic therapy completed 4 tools: (1) Health Outcomes Tool, which ranks the importance of 4 outcomes (survival, function/independence, freedom from pain, freedom from symptoms); (2) Attitude Scale, which identifies the extent to which patients agree with statements related to health outcomes; (3) Now versus Later Tool, which ranks the relative importance of quality of life (QoL) now versus 1 and 5 years from now; and (4) Prognosis and Treatment Perceptions Questionnaire, which identifies the amount of information the patient prefers to receive about their disease and treatment, the patient’s treatment goal, the patient’s perception of the physician’s treatment goal, and self-reported health status. Results: We recruited 60 patients with NETs (50.0% aged ≥65 years; 96.7% with stage IV disease). Primary tumor locations included the gastrointestinal tract (41.7%), pancreas (30.0%), and lung (21.7%). A plurality of patients reported maintaining independence as their most important health outcome (46.7%), followed by survival (30.0%), freedom from pain (11.7%), and freedom from symptoms (11.7%). A total of 67% of patients agreed with the statement, “I would rather live a shorter life than lose my ability to take care of myself”; 85.0% agreed with the statement, “It is more important to me to maintain my thinking ability than to live as long as possible.” When asked to choose between current QoL versus QoL 1 year or 5 years in the future as more important, 48.3% and 40.0% of patients valued their QoL 1 year and 5 years in the future, respectively, more than their current QoL. Only 51.7% of patients believed their physician’s treatment goals aligned with their own. Conclusions: Adult patients with NETs strongly value independence over survival. More communication between patients with NETs and their physicians is needed to ensure that patient preferences are incorporated into treatment plans.