[Surgical treatment for pulmonary metastases from colorectal cancer]

Blalock first reported pulmonary resection for metastatic colorectal cancer in 1944. Since then, surgical resection of pulmonary metastases has been generally accepted as a standard therapeutic procedure in properly selected cases. Recently, the criteria of eligibility have been progressively expanded according to the development of radiological diagnosis using helical computed tomography (CT), widespread of minimum invasive video-assisted thoracic surgery. In this review summarized the surgical treatment of pulmonary metastases from colorectal cancer based on the recent literatures. Major areas of controversy remain with respect to the following aspects: prognostic factors (i.e., number of metastases, size of tumor, disease free interval, preoperative serum carcinoembryonic antigen level), procedure of operation (i.e., role of video-assisted thoracic surgery, lymphonode dissection), indication of surgical treatment on metastases both lung and liver, role of repeat thoracotomy for recurrence. For all above-mentioned points it appeared reasonable to try to the cooperative multicentric clinical prospective study.