Patients with 2 or more identified risk factors (e.g., male sex, low anastomosis) may require a diverting stoma to mitigate the risk of anastomotic leakage after laparoscopic rectal cancer excision.
Male sex, low anastomosis, preoperative chemoradiation, advanced tumor stage, perioperative bleeding, and multiple firings of the linear stapler increased the risk of AL after laparoscopic surgery for rectal cancer. A diverting stoma might be mandatory in patients with 2 or more of the risk factors identified in this analysis.
Park et al. (Fri,) studied this question.