General surgery is a surgical specialty that focuses on alimentary canal and abdominal contents including the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, pancreas, gallbladder, appendix and bile ducts, and often the thyroid gland. They also deal with diseases involving the skin, breast, soft tissue, trauma, peripheral artery disease and hernias and perform endoscopic as such as gastroscopy, colonoscopy and laparoscopic procedures.
A randomized controlled trial is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical techniques, medical devices, diagnostic procedures or other medical treatments.
Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer, is the development of cancer from the colon or rectum. Signs and symptoms may include blood in the stool, a change in bowel movements, weight loss, and fatigue. Most colorectal cancers are due to old age and lifestyle factors, with only a small number of cases due to underlying genetic disorders. Risk factors include diet, obesity, smoking, and lack of physical activity. Dietary factors that increase the risk include red meat, processed meat, and alcohol. Another risk factor is inflammatory bowel disease, which includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Some of the inherited genetic disorders that can cause colorectal cancer include familial adenomatous polyposis and hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer; however, these represent less than 5% of cases. It typically starts as a benign tumor, often in the form of a polyp, which over time becomes cancerous.
Sigmoidoscopy is the minimally invasive medical examination of the large intestine from the rectum through to the nearest part of the colon, the sigmoid colon. There are two types of sigmoidoscopy: flexible sigmoidoscopy, which uses a flexible endoscope, and rigid sigmoidoscopy, which uses a rigid device. Flexible sigmoidoscopy is generally the preferred procedure. A sigmoidoscopy is similar to, but not the same as, a colonoscopy. A sigmoidoscopy only examines up to the sigmoid, the most distal part of the colon, while colonoscopy examines the whole large bowel.
Pancreatic cancer arises when cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a mass. These cancerous cells have the ability to invade other parts of the body. A number of types of pancreatic cancer are known.
Sir Richard Peto is an English statistician and epidemiologist who is Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, England.
Adjuvant therapy, also known as adjunct therapy, adjuvant care, or augmentation therapy, is a therapy that is given in addition to the primary or initial therapy to maximize its effectiveness. The surgeries and complex treatment regimens used in cancer therapy have led the term to be used mainly to describe adjuvant cancer treatments. An example of such adjuvant therapy is the additional treatment usually given after surgery where all detectable disease has been removed, but where there remains a statistical risk of relapse due to the presence of undetected disease. If known disease is left behind following surgery, then further treatment is not technically adjuvant.
Total mesorectal excision (TME) is a standard surgical technique for treatment of rectal cancer, first described in 1982 by Professor Bill Heald at the UK's Basingstoke District Hospital. It is a precise dissection of the mesorectal envelope comprising rectum containing the tumour together with all the surrounding fatty tissue and the sheet of tissue that contains lymph nodes and blood vessels. Dissection is along the avascular alveolar plane between the presacral and mesorectal fascia, described as holy plane. Dissection along this plane facilitates a straightforward dissection and preserves the sacral vessels and hypogastric nerves and is a sphincter-sparing resection and decreases permanent stoma rates. It is possible to rejoin the two ends of the colon; however, most patients require a temporary ileostomy pouch to bypass the colon, allowing it to heal with less risk of infection, perforation or leakage.
Edrecolomab is a mouse-derived monoclonal antibody targeting the cell-surface glycoprotein EpCAM (17-1A), which is expressed on epithelial tissues and on various carcinomas.
Breast cancer chemotherapy refers to the use of cytotoxic drugs (chemotherapy) in the treatment of breast cancer.
In oncology, metastasectomy is the surgical removal of metastases, which are secondary cancerous growths that have spread from cancer originating in another organ in the body.
Sham surgery is a faked surgical intervention that omits the step thought to be therapeutically necessary.
Preoperative rehabilitation, prehabilitation or prehab, is a form of healthcare intervention that takes place before a medical or surgical intervention with the aim to reduce side effects and complications, and enhance recovery. Multidisciplinary team involvement can range from physiotherapists, occupational therapists, respiratory therapists, doctors, pharmacologists, anesthesiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists and sports physiologists.
Cancer treatments are a wide range of treatments available for the many different types of cancer, with each cancer type needing its own specific treatment. Treatments can include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, targeted therapy including small-molecule drugs or monoclonal antibodies, and PARP inhibitors such as olaparib. Other therapies include hyperthermia, immunotherapy, photodynamic therapy, and stem-cell therapy. Most commonly cancer treatment involves a series of separate therapies such as chemotherapy before surgery. Angiogenesis inhibitors are sometimes used to enhance the effects of immunotherapies.
Targeted intra-operative radiotherapy, also known as targeted IORT, is a technique of giving radiotherapy to the tissues surrounding a cancer after its surgical removal, a form of intraoperative radiation therapy. The technique was designed in 1998 at the University College London.
Timothy Joseph Yeatman, M.D. F.A.C.S. is currently the Associate Center Director for Translational Research and Innovation for the Tampa General Hospital Cancer Institute and Professor of Surgery at the University of South Florida, United States. He previously served as the Executive Medical Director of Oncologic Services and the Senior Medical Director for the Oncology Clinical Program at Intermountain Healthcare, serving 23 hospitals and >6000 patients across the State of Utah and beyond. He was also Professor of Surgery at the University of Utah and a Member of the Huntsman Cancer Institute’s Cellular Response and Regulation Program. Dr Yeatman was also the Director of Gibbs Cancer Center and President of Gibbs Cancer Center & Research Institute in Spartanburg, South Carolinawhere he founded the Guardian Research Network, a novel approach to Clincial data analytics, leveraging the entire EHR for real time database queries for identifying clinical trial candidates. Yeatman held numerous positions at the Moffitt Cancer Center (MCC) in Florida over a 20 year span from 1992 - 2012. Yeatman served as the Associate Center Director for Clinical Investigations, the Associate Center Director for Translational Research, the Executive Vice President for Translational Research, Professor of Surgery and Cncologic Sciences, and the GI Tumor Program Leader at the Moffitt Cancer Center and the University of South Florida. There he led a $100m Moffitt:Merck collaboration and co-founded a novel biotech company, M2Gen. He also served as Chief Scientific Officer for the Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), a non-profit organization appointed by Congress and funded by NASA to oversee all scientific use of the International Space Station. He has been funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since 1993 and continues to perform basic and translational colorectal cancer research in genomics and biomarker development.
Ned Abraham was an Associate Professor of surgery at the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales and is a general & colorectal surgeon, a clinical academic and a retired Australian Army Reserve Officer. He has spoken at multiple national and international meetings in four continents and his published articles in general, colorectal and academic surgery have been cited in the medical literature close to two thousand times. He continues to practice surgery in Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia.
Steven D. Wexner is an American surgeon and physician. He is Director of the Ellen Leifer Shulman and Steven Shulman Digestive Disease Center at Cleveland Clinic Florida. Wexner has received numerous regional, national, and international research awards. Through his multiple academic appointments, Wexner personally trains 15-20 surgeons each year, and he educates thousands more around the world through conferences and lectures. He is a resource for his colleagues from around the world for referral of patients with challenging or complex problems. In 2020, he was elected vice-chair of the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons for a one-year term. Since 1990. he has served as Symposium Director of the Cleveland Clinic Annual International Colorectal Disease Symposium. The Symposium was held in Fort Lauderdale or Boca Raton every year from 1990 to 2019. Since 2020, the Symposium has expanded to include host locations outside of the US with interruptions during the pandemic years of 2021–2022.
Wendy Sheila Atkin was Professor of Gastrointestinal Epidemiology at Imperial College London.
Armando Elario Giuliano is a surgical oncologist, surgeon scientist and medical professor in Los Angeles, California, United States of America. He is the Linda and Jim Lippman Chair in Surgical Oncology and co-director of Saul and Joyce Brandman Breast Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles.
