The OSLO-COMET trial, presented at the largest world cancer conference (ASCO) in Chicago, studied the different ways of operating on colorectal cancer.
Presented at congress of theAmerican Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which brings together hundreds of thousands of oncology physicians, researchers and scientists from around the world each year, the OSLO-COMET randomized trial found that laparoscopic surgery did not increase the chances of survival, compared to open surgery, to remove metastases that had spread to the liver in patients with colorectal cancer. Overall, patients lived more than 6.5 years after surgery, whether laparoscopic or open.
Liver metastases
In classic open surgery, a single incision a few centimeters long is made to access the abdomen. Laparoscopic surgery, considered minimally invasive, uses multiple incisions of a quarter inch or less. Through these openings, a laparoscope* is used to send images of the abdominal cavity to a monitor to perform the operation.
From February 2012 to January 2016, researchers randomly assigned 280 colorectal cancer patients with liver metastases to laparoscopic surgery or open surgery. 133 people had laparoscopy, while 147 people had open surgery. About half of the patients received chemotherapy before or after surgery.
Improved quality of life
Conclusion: people who benefited from the laparoscopic intervention lived an average of 80 months after the surgery, compared to 81 months for those who underwent open surgery. Patients also reported improved quality of life after laparoscopy, which also had fewer postoperative complications (19% with laparoscopy versus 31% with open surgery). The researchers also found that the costs of the two operations were similar.
Colorectal cancer is one of the most common and deadliest cancers. In 2018, this pathology affected approximately 43,000 French people (23,000 men and 20,000 women) and caused 17,000 deaths (9,000 men and 8,000 women). While detected early, colorectal cancer can be cured in 9 out of 10 cases.
*The laparoscope is a surgical telescope.
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