Long-term outcome following curative surgery for malignant large bowel obstruction

This study determined whether the long-term outcome of patients with obstructing colorectal cancer could be related to conventional pathological prognostic variables or to other clinical, operative or histological features. Ninety-eight patients with bowel obstruction who had undergone potentially curative surgery and survived the postoperative period were studied. Features related to poor long-term outcome after a median follow-up of 5 years included bowel perforation at initial operation (P = 0.007), advanced tumour stage (P < 0.001), poor tumour differentiation (P = 0.02), mucin production by tumour (P = 0.004) and the presence of vascular (P = 0.08) and neural (P = 0.004) invasion. Outcome was not significantly related to the seniority of the operating surgeon (P = 0.52), even when this was adjusted for potentially confounding variables (adjusted hazard rate ratio for trainee surgeons 1.4 (95 per cent confidence interval 0.9-2.4), P = 0.16). Conventional prognostic features may help to identify the majority of patients with obstructed colorectal cancer at high risk of tumour recurrence and death.