Abstract

Introduction: There has been progress in surgical treatment of rectal cancer (CR) in the past decade due to a better knowledge of the disease and the adoption of new methods of preoperative staging and treatment. The aim of this report is to analyze the early postoperative morbidity and mortality in a ten year series of patients with CR submitted to radical resection. Methods: In the database of colorectal cancer patients prospectively maintained, all patients with CR submitted to curative radical resection electively between January 2000 and December 2010 were identified. Early postoperative (30 day) morbidity and mortality were described and analyzed in a multivariate analysis to identify predictive factors. Results: A total of 308 patients were included, 55.2% male with a median age of 62 years. Over two thirds of tumors were located in the mid or lower rectum. Anterior resection was performed in 83.1%, and neoadyuvant radio-chemotherapy was used in 37.7%. Overall morbidity and mortality were 13.6% and 0.3% respectively. In multivariate analysis, American Society of Anesthesiologists had an or of 3.343 (1.601- 6.982) for postoperative morbidity, and laparoscopic approach 0.188 (0.054-0.649). Conclusion: The morbidity rate of this series is similar to the one observed in other studies. The ASA score is an independent risk factor for postoperative complication and the laparoscopic approach would be a protective factor. In this series, preoperative chemoradiation was not a risk factor for postoperative morbidity.