Gertjan Rasschaert, Medical Doctor and Consultant specializing in Gastrointestinal Oncology and Gastroenterology at UZ Leuven, shared on LinkedIn:
“For selected patients, the future question may no longer be ‘Can surgery be omitted?’ but ‘What evidence of residual disease would make surgery necessary?’
Happy to see our ‘For Debate’ article ‘No more surgery by default in dMMR/MSI-H colon cancer? From mandatory colectomy to response-adapted surgery’ now published in EJSO – alongside the counterpoint from our friends and colleagues in Paris.
The idea grew out of a debate Jeremie Lefevre and I had at the ESCP26 Congress in Prague in September. With the extraordinary responses we now see after neoadjuvant immunotherapy in dMMR/MSI-H colon cancer, the question is no longer simply whether immunotherapy works – but whether surgery must remain mandatory in every patient in whom it works completely.
As an oncologist, I feel particularly fortunate to work at UZ Leuven with progressive surgeons who are open-minded to argue for less surgery from within surgery itself when the biology and the interests of the patient ask us to.
That same mindset was there already from day one when we started building our Belgian neoadjuvant CRC platform around AZUR-4 a couple years ago. Very fittingly, AZUR-4 now completed full recruitment last month.
And perhaps even more importantly, the operational success of that platform is now allowing us to bring several new neoadjuvant trials to Belgium. More on those very soon.
Many thanks to Cédric Schraepen, Albert Wolthuis, André D’Hoore – and to Jérémy and our Paris colleagues Jérémy Lefèvre, Romain Cohen, Yann Parc and Thierry André for keeping this debate moving forward.
From mandatory surgery to conditional surgery.”
Title: No more surgery by default in dMMR/MSI-H colon cancer? From mandatory colectomy to response-adapted surgery
Authors: Gertjan Rasschaert, Cédric Schraepen, Albert Wolthuis, André D’Hoore
Other articles about Gertjan Rasschaert on OncoDaily.