Management and 1-year outcomes of anastomotic leakage after elective colorectal surgery.

PURPOSE: To analyze different types of management and one-year outcomes of anastomotic leakage (AL) after elective colorectal resection. METHODS: All patients with anastomotic leakage after elective colorectal surgery with anastomosis (76/1,546; 4.9%), with the exclusion of cases with proximal diverting stoma, were followed-up for at least one year. Primary endpoints were as follows: composite outcome of one-year mortality and/or unplanned intensive care unit (ICU) admission and additional morbidity rates. Secondary endpoints were as follows: length of stay (LOS), one-year persistent stoma rate, and rate of return to intended oncologic therapy (RIOT). RESULTS: One-year mortality rate was 10.5% and unplanned ICU admission rate was 30.3%. Risk factors of the composite outcome included age (aOR = 1.08 per 1-year increase, p = 0.002) and anastomotic breakdown with end stoma at reoperation (aOR = 2.77, p = 0.007). Additional morbidity rate was 52.6%: risk factors included open versus laparoscopic reoperation (aOR = 4.38, p = 0.03) and ICU admission (aOR = 3.63, p = 0.05). Median (IQR) overall LOS was 20 days (14-26), higher in the subgroup of patients reoperated without stoma. At 1 year, a stoma persisted in 32.0% of patients, higher in the open (41.2%) versus laparoscopic (12.5%) reoperation group (p = 0.04). Only 4 out of 18 patients (22.2%) were able to RIOT. CONCLUSION: Mortality and/or unplanned ICU admission rates after AL are influenced by increasing age and by anastomotic breakdown at reoperation; additional morbidity rates are influenced by unplanned ICU admission and by laparoscopic approach to reoperation, the latter also reducing permanent stoma and failure to RIOT rates. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov # NCT03560180.

Advantages of the Maneuver of Intestinal Derotation for Pancreaticoduodenectomy.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) is the surgical treatment of choice for cephalopancreatic cancer representing the only hope of cure. Since its first description in 1935 by Allan Whipple, several modifications have been proposed. The execution of the Cattell-Braasch maneuver of intestinal derotation (ID) in the course of PD, by restoring the entire bowel to its embryological position, could represent a further and multiexpedient variant. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively studied 45 consecutive pancreatic cancer patients treated with Whipple-Child PD in which the Cattell-Braasch procedure of ID was performed as integrative part of the intervention. Additionally, we compared our results with the ones of conventional PD performed through open, laparoscopy, and robotic surgery. Continuous variables of ID-PD were calculated using Student's t-test whereas Mantel-Haenszel method was used for comparison with other non-ID PD techniques. RESULTS: The average operative time was 342 min (range 250-435 min). The median estimated intraoperative blood loss was 460 ml (range 350-570 ml) (p < .0001); no intraoperative blood transfusion was required. The average number of lymph nodes harvested per specimen was 19.4 (range 17-25) (p < .0001). Morbidity and mortality rate was 28.8% and 4.4% (respectively p < .0001 and p = .1596). CONCLUSION: Our data are in keeping with the classical PDs performed without ID. The association of the maneuver of ID with PD seems to bring some important advantages such as wider exposure of the operative field, safer dissection of anatomical structures, less intraoperative blood loss and higher number of sampled lymph nodes.

Down-regulation of serum/glucocorticoid regulated kinase 1 in colorectal tumours is largely independent of promoter hypermethylation.

BACKGROUND: We have previously shown that serum/glucocorticoid regulated kinase 1 (SGK1) is down-regulated in colorectal cancers (CRC) with respect to normal tissue. As hyper-methylation of promoter regions is a well-known mechanism of gene silencing in cancer, we tested whether the SGK1 promoter region was methylated in colonic tumour samples. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We investigated the methylation profile of the two CpG islands present in the promoter region of SGK1 in a panel of 5 colorectal cancer cell lines by sequencing clones of bisulphite-treated DNA samples. We further confirmed our findings in a panel of 10 normal and 10 tumour colonic tissue samples of human origin. We observed CpG methylation only in the smaller and more distal CpG island in the promoter region of SGK1 in both normal and tumour samples of colonic origin. We further identified a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP, rs1743963) which affects methylation of the corresponding CpG. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results show that even though partial methylation of the promoter region of SGK1 is present, this does not account for the different expression levels seen between normal and tumour tissue.