Surgical therapy of hepatic colorectal metastasis

The liver is a common site of metastases from colorectal cancer. The data are convincing that liver resection is a safe and effective therapy for such metastatic disease. Even extensive resections can be performed with a less than 5% mortality rate at major centers and a 5-year survival rate of 30% to 40%. This review examines factors important for patient selection for liver resection and proposes a prognostic scoring system that may help in patient selection. For unresectable disease, many methods for ablating tumors are now available that will likely prove to be useful adjuncts to current treatment.