Citations

Purpose. Multimodal analgesia is an essential component of an enhanced recovery pathway (ERP). An ERP that includes the use of single-injection intrathecal analgesia (IA) has been shown to decrease morbidity and cost and shorten length of stay (LOS). Limited data exist on safety, feasibility, and the optimal IA regimen. Our objective was to characterize the efficacy, safety, and feasibility of IA within an ERP in a cohort of colorectal surgical patients. Methods. We performed a retrospective review of all consecutive patients aged ≥ 18 years who underwent open or minimally invasive colorectal surgery from October 2012 to December 2013. All patients were enrolled in an institutional ERP that included the use of single-injection IA. Demographics, anesthetic management, efficacy (pain scores and opiate consumption), postoperative ileus (POI), adverse effects, and LOS are reported. Results. 601 patients were identified. The majority received opioid-only IA (91%) rather than a multimodal regimen. Median LOS was 3 days. Overall rate of ileus was 16%. Median pain scores at 4, 8, 16, 24, and 48 hours were 3, 2, 3, 4, and 3, respectively. There was no difference in postoperative pain scores, LOS, or POI based on intrathecal medication or dose received. Overall, development of respiratory depression (0.2%) or pruritus (1.2%) was rare. One patient required blood patch for postdural headache. Conclusion. Intrathecal analgesia is safe, feasible, and efficacious in the setting of ERP for colorectal surgery. All regimens and doses achieved a short LOS, low pain scores, and a low incidence of POI. This trial is registered with Clinicaltrails.gov NCT03411109.

Abstract Background The purpose of this study was to define survival rates in patients with isolated advanced abdominal nodal metastases secondary to colorectal cancer (CRC), treated with curative-intent trimodality therapy. Materials and Methods Sixty-five patients received trimodality therapy, defined as chemotherapy delivered with external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) followed by lymphadenectomy and intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT). Infusional 5-fluorouracil was the most common radiosensitizer used (63%, 41 patients). The median dose of EBRT was 50 Gy, and the median dose of IORT was 12.5 Gy. We evaluated time to distant metastasis, toxicities, local failure within the EBRT field, recurrence within the IORT field, and survival. Results Fifty-two percent of patients were male; patients’ median age was 50.5 years. All patients had an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group score ≤1. Twenty-nine patients had right-sided colon cancer, 22 had left-sided colon cancer, and 14 had rectal primaries. The median time from initial CRC diagnosis to development of abdominal nodal metastatic disease was 20.6 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 21.2–40.8 months). Seventy-eight percent (51 patients) had para-aortic nodal metastases, 15% (10 patients) had mesenteric nodal metastases, and 6% (4 patients) had both. With a median follow-up of 77.6 months, the median overall survival and 5-year estimated survival rate were 55.4 months (95% CI, 47.2–80.9 months) and 45%, respectively. The median progression-free survival was 19.3 months (95% CI, 16.5–32.8 months). Twenty-six (40%) patients never developed distant disease. The outcome was not affected by disease sidedness or rectal primary. Treatment was well tolerated without grade 3 or 4 toxicities. Conclusion Trimodality therapy produces sustainable long-term survival in selected patients with metastatic CRC presenting with isolated retroperitoneal or mesenteric nodal relapse. Implications for Practice This article reports a unique trimodality approach incorporating external beam radiotherapy with radiosensitizing chemotherapy, surgical resection, and intraoperative radiotherapy provides durable survival benefit with significant curative potential for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who present with isolated abdominal nodal (mesenteric and/or retroperitoneal) recurrence.

Background Meckel's diverticulum is present in about 2% of the population. The literature reports 3.2% incidence of tumors within Meckel's diverticulum; the tumors are predominantly benign. Objective and methods The purpose of this study was to evaluate malignant tumors in Meckel's diverticulum through systematic review of the literature and review of electronic medical records including pathology reports over 14 years at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA. Results A literature review over the last 10 years identified 37 citations with 402 patients (median age: 58 years; 68.9% males). The predominant malignancy reported was neuroendocrine tumor 84.6%, followed by gastrointestinal stromal tumor 8.2%, and adenocarcinoma 6%. At the time of diagnosis, 29.5% of patients had metastases. In the Mayo Clinic electronic medical records review, there were 19 patients (5.1% of them surgically removed Meckel's diverticulum) who had a malignancy associated with Meckel's diverticulum: 63.2% neuroendocrine tumor, 10.5% gastrointestinal stromal tumor, 5.3% adenocarcinoma, 5.3% pancreatic epithelial neoplasia, and 15.8% metastases from secondary location. Median size of the malignancy was 7 mm, and 17/19 malignancies were coincidental findings. Most neuroendocrine tumors infiltrated the submucosa, while gastrointestinal stromal tumor and adenocarcinoma invaded the serosa. At the time of diagnosis, 33.3% of patients had metastases. Conclusion About 5% of Meckel's diverticulums resected were associated with malignant tumors, most commonly neuroendocrine tumor, and a significant portion of Meckel's diverticulum malignancy was metastatic at the time of discovery.

BACKGROUND: Despite distant historical studies that demonstrated the adequacy of preoperative antibiotic prophylaxis, current surgical practice continues to use antibiotics for postoperative coverage up to 24 hours. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate a change in antibiotic prophylaxis duration and its effect on surgical site infection in a high-volume modern colorectal practice. DESIGN: A case-controlled series retrospectively reviewed outcomes through a prospective validated data base. SETTING: The study was conducted at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. PATIENTS: A total of 965 patients were evaluated. Our study analyzed patient outcomes related to surgical site infection comparing cohort 1 (2012–2013), which had the same antibiotic coverage preoperatively up to 24 hours postoperatively, and cohort 2 (2014–2015), which eliminated postoperative doses and relied solely on pre- and intraoperative dosing duration. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcomes of this study are superficial and deep surgical site infection. RESULTS: There were no differences identified for superficial or deep surgical site infection rates between cohorts. Before the change in antibiotic dosing duration (2012–2013), 28 of 493 patients (5.7%) vs after the practice change (2014–2015), 25 of 472 patients (5.3%) were reported to have superficial or deep surgical site infection (p = 0.794). LIMITATIONS: This study is limited by its retrospective design within a single institution. CONCLUSION: These equivalent results present an opportunity for surgeons to reconsider optimal antibiotic duration and minimize unnecessary antibiotic dosing. See Video Abstract at http://links.lww.com/DCR/A322.

Hospital-specific electronic health record systems are used to inform clinical practice about best practices and quality improvements. Many surgical centers have developed deterministic clinical decision rules to discover adverse events (e.g. postoperative complications) using electronic health record data. However, these data provide opportunities to use probabilistic methods for early prediction of adverse health events, which may be more informative than deterministic algorithms. Electronic health record data from a set of 9598 colorectal surgery cases from 2010 to 2014 were used to predict the occurrence of selected complications including surgical site infection, ileus, and bleeding. Consistent with previous studies, we find a high rate of missing values for both covariates and complication information (4–90%). Several machine learning classification methods are trained on an 80% random sample of cases and tested on a remaining holdout set. Predictive performance varies by complication, although an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve as high as 0.86 on testing data was achieved for bleeding complications, and accuracy for all complications compares favorably to existing clinical decision rules. Our results confirm that electronic health records provide opportunities for improved risk prediction of surgical complications; however, consideration of data quality and consistency standards is an important step in predictive modeling with such data.

535 Background: The most effective management of locally recurrent colorectal cancer (CRC) is resection. This is also true for hepatic metastases (HM). Data remains limited, however, regarding concomitant resection of recurrent CRC and HM. The aims of this study were to determine the feasibility, safety and outcomes in terms of disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients undergoing concomitant resection of recurrent CRC with HM. Methods: All patients who underwent resection of recurrent CRC from 1/1995 to 1/2007 at Mayo Clinic, Rochester were reviewed (n=406). The study group consisted of patients who underwentconcomitant resection of locally recurrent CRC and hepatic resection for metastatic CRC (n= 45). Kaplan-Meier Survival was used to estimate DFS and OS. Results: The study group consisted of 27 men and 18 women. The median age was 59 years. Surgical management involved pelvic dissection in 43 patients and ileotransverse colectomy in two. 17 patients required resection of contiguous organs. 24 patients received intra-operative radiation. 34 patients underwent multiple hepatic wedge resections, 6 patients segmentectomy, 3 left hepatectomy, and 2 right hepatectomy. There was no perioperative mortality. Morbidity was 37%, 2 patients required re-operation. The 1, 3, and 5 year DFS was 72.2, 42.3, and 18.5%, respectively. The 1, 3, and 5 year OS was 87.7, 47.6, and 36.2%, respectively. Conclusions: Synchronous resection of locally recurrent CRC and HM is safe and feasible; morbidity is reasonable and mortality zero. DFS and OS in this patient population appear comparable to that of patients undergoing separate, staged resections.

711 Background: For patients with stage IVA rectal cancer with liver metastases treated with curative-intent chemotherapy and surgery, the role of adjuvant pelvic radiotherapy (RT) is unclear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of pelvic RT on oncologic outcomes in this patient population. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed medical records of all patients with stage IVA rectal adenocarcinoma with liver metastases treated with curative-intent resection of the primary tumor and all liver metastases at our institution between 1991 and 2010. Patient and treatment characteristics were compared between patients who did or did not receive pelvic RT using chi-square and unpaired ttests. Survival and recurrence estimates were calculated from date of initial diagnosis using the Kaplan-Meier method. Local recurrence (LR) was defined as recurrence in the pelvis occurring at or before distant recurrence (DR). Cox regression was used to compare rates of freedom from LR (FFLR), freedom from DR (FFDR), and overall survival (OS) between patients who did or did not receive pelvic RT. Results: The analysis included 65 patients. Median patient age at diagnosis was 59 years (range, 27-87). Tumor stage was T2 (n = 4), T3 (n = 53), or T4 (n = 8). The median number of liver metastases was 2 (range, 1-14). Surgery was low anterior resection (n = 54) or abdominoperineal resection (n = 11). All patients received perioperative fluoropyrimidine based chemotherapy. Pelvic RT was administered to 35 patients (54%), either preoperatively (n = 22) or postoperatively (n = 13). Median RT dose was 50.4 Gy (range 25-58). Patient characteristics were similar for those who did or did not receive pelvic RT. Median follow-up was 3.7 years. The 3-year estimates of FFLR, FFDR and OS were 81% vs 58% (p =.056), 35% vs 29% (p =.75), and 66% vs 71% (p =.81) for RT vs no RT, respectively. Conclusions: In this analysis of patients with stage IVA rectal cancer with liver metastases undergoing curative intent therapy, pelvic RT (vs. no pelvic RT) was associated with a trend to lower rates of LR and similar rates of DR and OS.

498 Background: Prior study, demonstrating differential immunohistochemical EGFR expression between the primary colon cancer and the liver metastasis, suggested possible molecular differences between the two tumor sites. This questions the relevance of obtaining genomic information from the primary tumor to guide adjuvant treatment. In this study we examine whether there are genomic differences specific to metastatic nodes versus the paired colon primary samples. Methods: Using 30 primary and lymph node metastasis pairs (dissected for >80% tumor from paraffin embedded tissue), we obtained a dataset of copy number derived from the Affymetrix Oncoscan Molecular Inversion Probe platform. Using the Nexus Copy Number software for processing, we used the default automatic segmentation of the copy number data with a threshold for calling copy number gains/losses of 2.3/1.7. Subsequently we applied the Wilcoxon signed-rank test in order to find regions showing copy number imbalance that differ between the paired nodes and tumors correcting for multiple comparisons by performing permutation-based estimation of the false discovery rate permuting the samples 100 times. Results: Using 40 ng of total DNA from paraffin embedded tumor from primary and tumor in positive nodes, we obtained high quality, genome wide copy number data. Using FDR < 0.1, we identified four chromosomal segments that showed statistically significant increased likelihood of copy number gains in the primary tumor compared to the tumor-containing node. Thirty five percent of tumor-bearing lymph nodes were copy number normal at the EGFR locus whereas the corresponding primary tumor showed amplification at 7p11.2 (includes the EGFR gene). A similar pattern was observed for 8q24, 14q11.2, and 20q12-q13; regions associated with aggressive tumor behavior. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate four significant differences between the primary tumor and lymph node metastasis and in all cases the metastasis were copy number normal compared to the copy number gain observed in the primary tumor. These results support the importance to examine differences at the genome level between the metastatic tumor site and the primary.

BACKGROUND: Clinical trials demonstrate that postresection chemotherapy conveys survival benefit to patients with stage III colon cancer. It is unclear whether this benefit can be extrapolated to the elderly, who are underenrolled in clinical trials. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine outcomes of selected octogenarians with stage III colon cancer with/without postresection adjuvant therapy. DESIGN: This was a retrospective cohort study (2006–2011) using unadjusted Kaplan–Meier and adjusted Cox proportional hazards analyses of overall survival. SETTING: The study was conducted with the National Cancer Database. PATIENTS: We included patients 80 to 89 years of age who were undergoing curative-intent surgery for stage III colon cancer and excluded patients who received neoadjuvant therapy, died within 6 weeks of surgery, or had high comorbidity. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Overall survival was the main measure. RESULTS: A total of 8141 octogenarians were included; 3483 (42.8%) received postresection chemotherapy, and 4658 (57.2%) underwent surgery alone. Patients receiving chemotherapy were younger (82.0 vs 84.0 years; p < 0.001), healthier (73.1% vs 70.4% with no comorbidities; p = 0.009), and more likely to have N2 disease (40.4% vs 32.8%; p < 0.001). Overall survival was improved in patients receiving adjuvant chemotherapy (median = 61.7 vs 35.0 months; p < 0.001). Subgroup analysis of patients offered chemotherapy but refusing (n = 1315) demonstrated overall survival worse than those receiving adjuvant chemotherapy (median = 42.7 vs 61.7 months; p < 0.001). Multivariable analysis adjusting for potential confounders showed therapy with surgery alone to be independently associated with increased mortality hazard (HR = 1.83; p < 0.001), and the mortality hazard remained elevated in patients who voluntarily refused adjuvant therapy (HR = 1.45; p < 0.001). LIMITATIONS: The study was limited by its retrospective, nonrandomized design. CONCLUSIONS: In selected octogenarians with stage III colon cancer, postresection adjuvant chemotherapy was associated with superior overall survival. However, less than half of the octogenarians with stage III colon cancer in the National Cancer Database received it. The remaining majority, who were all fit and survived ≥6 weeks postsurgery, could have derived benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy. This represents a substantial opportunity for quality improvement in treating octogenarians with stage III colon cancer.

Patient-centered cognitive support has been shown to be critically important to facilitate the effective use of health information technologies (HIT). There is a well-documented need to better understand HIT-mediated clinical workflow. Current technologies can burden clinicians’ cognitive resources, which is associated with patient safety risks and medical errors. We sought to employ a distributed cognition approach to examine how information flows across the activity system to support clinicians’ problem-solving. Specifically, we studied the propagation of representational states across media, conversations, actors and time in the coordination of patient-care processes. We examined multiple instances of work and information flow in a real-world setting, revealing problems in information flow: a) use of paper artifacts has limitations to facilitating coordination of care, b) clinicians challenged in developing shared awareness, c) responsibility of representing patient states is distributed across documents, d) clinical reasoning that informed care plans was absent from documents. Findings surface a challenge to automated monitoring of care goals; much of the information is present only in clinicians’ minds and in informal documents.