ABSTRACT
The treatment of recurrent rectal cancer is a major challenge for surgeons, radiotherapists,
and medical oncologists. In recent years, encouraging results have been reported with
multimodality treatment. The goal of the present article is to outline strategies
for the diagnosis and treatment of recurrent rectal cancer, based on data reported
in the literature and our own experience. Following histologic confirmation, the pattern
of recurrent disease and resectability are evaluated by a thorough preoperative diagnostic
workup that includes clinical assessment, endoscopy, and imaging studies. Surgical
treatment, tailored according to the pattern of pelvic recurrence, aims to achieve
complete disease removal. However, when curative resection is infeasible, chemotherapy
and preoperative or intraoperative radiotherapy are utilized in order to improve resectability
rate and survival. A variety of different approaches have been proposed for the palliation
of symptoms in patients with advanced local recurrent disease not amenable to multimodality
treatment.
KEYWORD
Recurrent rectal cancer - multimodality treatment - surgery - radiotherapy - chemotherapy
