Colorectal Liver Metastasis

Abstract

Metastatic colorectal cancer isolated to the liver is a common clinical presentation in the United States, occurring in an estimated 50,000 patients per year. Unlike most stage IV malignancies, surgery is an effective mainstay of therapy. In the past several decades, novel surgical approaches, improved systemic chemotherapy, and locoregional therapies such as ablation and hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy have broadened the indications for resection. At the same time, advances in perioperative care and adoption of parenchymal-sparing surgical techniques have lowered the perioperative mortality of liver resection to approximately 1%. Surgical cure is possible and using 10-year disease-free survival as a definition, this can be achieved in approximately 20 to 30% of well-selected patients. The majority of patients recur; thus, active surveillance is appropriate to identify patients for potential salvage therapy, including in some cases repeat resections and/or ablation, which is associated with prolonged survival and potential cure. More research is needed in biomarker drivers of prognosis, as there are few reliable clinicopathologic indicators to identify those in whom surgery will not benefit. This review contains 7 figures, 7 tables, and 90 references. Key Words: colorectal cancer, FOLFOX, FOLFIRI, hepatic arterial infusion, hepatic resection, liver remnant, microwave ablation, portal vein ligation, ALPPS