Journal of the American College of Surgeons
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Palliative surgery for advanced cancer patients involves complex decision making. Surgeons with a cancer-focused practice were surveyed to determine the extent to which palliative surgery was currently practiced, to identify ethical dilemmas and barriers they faced in performing palliative surgery, and to evaluate their treatment choices in four different clinical scenarios. ⋯ Palliative surgery involves numerous ethical dilemmas, the most prominent being providing honest information to patients without destroying hope, and complex treatment decision making. We have identified variables of major influence to surgeons in the palliative treatment selection for patients with advanced, solid malignancies. Validation of these variables as meaningful will require future studies focusing on patient outcomes.
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Resection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is associated with a high incidence of recurrence. Aggressive management of recurrence is an important strategy in prolonging survival. This study evaluated the role of combined resection and locoregional therapy in the management of selected patients with extrahepatic and intrahepatic recurrences. ⋯ Aggressive management with combined resection of isolated extrahepatic recurrence and re-resection or locoregional therapy for intrahepatic recurrence may offer longterm survival in selected patients who develop both intrahepatic and extrahepatic recurrences after hepatectomy for HCC.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Prospective randomized clinical trial comparing nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide pneumoperitoneum for laparoscopic surgery.
Recent publications demonstrating the safety and advantages of N2O for pneumoperitoneum (PP) prompted us to reconsider N2O as an agent for PP in general surgical laparoscopy. The purpose of this prospective, double-blind, randomized clinical trial was to determine whether N2O PP has any benefits over CO2 PP. ⋯ These results suggest that the use of N2O PP has sufficient advantages over CO2 that it should be considered as the standard agent for therapeutic PP.