Surgical resection of colorectal hepatic metastases.

The reported median survival of patients with untreated colorectal liver metastases is 10.6 months from the time of diagnosis. Systemic and regional chemotherapy do produce responses in a proportion of patients but with limited prolongation of survival. At present, surgical resection is the only treatment that can cure. The 5-year survival rate following curative hepatic resection for colorectal liver metastases is 30% to 40%. However, only 5% to 10% of all patients with curative resection of their primary colon cancer will develop liver secondaries that are amenable to surgery. Hepatic resection for colorectal liver metastases should be offered to this select group of patients and should only be performed by an experienced surgical team with an operative mortality rate of less than five per cent.