Assessment of quality of oncologic colorectal resection in emergency colorectal cancer surgeries

Introduction Complicated colonic cancers present at a more advanced stage and are associated with high postoperative morbidity and mortality. This study aims at analyzing the quality of colorectal resection in emergency colorectal surgeries and its outcome, which is affected by multiple factors and can be classified as surgeon, pathologist, disease, or patient related. Patients and methods This is a prospective cross-sectional study that included 36 patients who underwent emergency resection for colorectal cancer presented to the Emergency Department at Kasr Al Ainy Teaching Hospital, Cairo University, Egypt. Patients were assessed by American Society of Anesthesiology score preoperatively and were followed up for 1 month postoperatively for morbidity and mortality. Age, sex, presentation, site of malignancy, type of operation, any intraoperative/postoperative complications, operative time (skin to skin), time of the operation, level and subspecialty of the operator, histopathology of the resected segment including margins, lymph nodes (LNs), and type of cancer were all assessed during the study. Results In the current study, the outcome of the surgery performed in the emergency setting showed that 38.9% of the patients in the study underwent a proper oncological resection regarding retrieval of LNs. Conclusion The morbidity and mortality were high; however, it was possible to respect the principles of oncologic resection, regarding the extent of resection, surgical margins, and LN dissection, but less than shown in the literature. This may be attributed to further complications of the disease and the clinical condition of most of the patients.