Synchronous liver resection with cytoreductive surgery for the treatment of liver and peritoneal metastases from colon cancer: results from an Australian centre

Background Treatment of peritoneal metastases (PM) and liver metastases (LM) from colon cancer remains controversial. LM has been viewed as exclusion criterion for cytoreductive surgery (CRS) on the basis that such spread represents systemic disease. CRS and intraperitoneal chemotherapy (IPC) has gained increasing recognition as a treatment modality for selected patients with colon cancer and PM. This study analyses results of CRS and IPC for colon cancer and synchronous resection for treatment of LM and PM. Methods Seventy‐eight patients with PM/LM colon cancer were analysed. Forty‐two patients with PM were treated for disease limited to the peritoneum (A), and 36 patients received treatment for both PM and LM (B). Overall survival (OS), disease‐free survival (DFS), morbidity, mortality and recurrence were compared. Results Median OS and DFS was 32.8 and 13.5 months. The median OS for A and B were 45.5 and 24.4 months respectively. Within B patients, 18 had a peritoneal carcinomatosis index (PCI) >7 and >3 LM and median survival of 21.8 months compared with 18 patients with PCI ≤7 and LM ≤3 with median survival of 38.4 months. Median DFS for A and B were 17.7 and 8.5 months respectively. Twenty‐seven in total experienced major complications following surgery. Sixty‐one patients recurred. Of A, 71.4% recurred compared with B at 86.1%. Conclusion While our study is limited, it has demonstrated encouraging evidence that long‐term survival outcomes can be achieved in this small but significant number of patients treated by CRS/IPC and additional synchronous liver resection with no significant increase in morbidity when compared with CRS/IPC alone.