Surgeon's role in CT-based preoperative determination of inferior mesenteric artery anatomy in colorectal cancer treatment.

Background: The inferior mesenteric artery (IMA) is a blood vessel of great importance in left colon and rectal cancer surgery. We aimed to determine the role of surgeons in computed tomography (CT) based vascular anatomy interpretation.

Method: Patients with left colon and rectal cancer treated surgically with D3 lymph node dissection and selective vascular ligation were included in this study.