Current changes in the management and outcome of patients with curable colorectal cancer.

Background: Major changes in the evaluation and treatment of curable colorectal cancer (CRC) have emerged in the last two decades. These changes have led to better patient outcome overtime.

Objectives: To evaluate the impact of these changes as reflected in the difference in long-term outcome of a consecutive group of recently laparoscopically operated curable CRC patients and a consecutive group of patients operated 20 years earlier in the same department.

[Anal mucinous adenocarcinoma arising in long standing fistula-in-ano].

Perianal mucinous adenocarcinoma is an unusual but well described malignancy constituting approximately 3 to 11% of all anal carcinoma. The pathology is thought to develop from one of three types, the distal part of the rectum, the mucin-secreting columnar epithelium of the anal glands, and from chronic fistula-in-ano. The association of carcinoma with anal fistula may manifest itself in several ways: a fistula may be associated with cancer elsewhere in the colon; cancer may present as a fistula; or cancer may develop in anal fistula.

[Gossypiboma?].

Although not a rare finding in medicine and particularly in surgery, only few know what "gossypiboma" actually means. The author briefly describes a patient found to have a neglicted, missed, surgical gauze in his abdominal cavity and explains the origin of the terms.