Active clinical trials for "Rectal Neoplasms"

This study investigates whether risk criteria based on MRI features could identify a cohort of patients with a good prognosis among those recommended for preoperative treatment by NCCN guidelines to avoid preoperative treatment with the likely good survival outcomes by primary surgery and more accurately indicate the response to the treatment and predict prognosis after neoadjuvant treatmen than radiographic TNM staging in the patients who received neoadjuvant therapy.

Pathologic complete response (pCR) after multimodal treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) patients is considered as the gold-standard of treatment success as it is associated to privileged oncologic outcome. Nevertheless, data from multicenter high-volume cohorts with long term follow-up are scarce. This is a multicenter observational study using prospectively collected data from the Spanish Rectal Cancer Project database. The main objective of the study is to update long-term oncologic follow-up of those patients treated for LARC with nCRT and surgery (either TME or subtotal TME; S-TME) who had obtained a pCR. Secondary objective is to analyze demographic, clinical, operative and treatment variables in search of related factors to adverse oncologic outcomes, like distant recurrence or tumor-related deaths. The results are reported in accordance with the STROBE (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology) Statement for observational studies. All calculations are performed using Stata 13.1 (StataCorp, Texas, USA).

The risk factors for stoma reversal failure have been rarely studied, which is probably one of the worst scenarios for a case who has a sphincter preserving procedure for a rectal cancer and is expecting to have regular bowel movements through a functional anus. Several studies have analyzed this particular issue and some have shown that up to 30% of 'temporary' stomas have never been closed. However these data have been criticized to be heterogeneous, since they have included patients with benign and malignant diseases, cases underwent elective or emergent anterior or low anterior resections or restorative proctocolectomy; and those with a colostomy or ileostomy, even an end stoma in some subjects. In addition, some studies have underlined some risk factors for the failure of stoma reversal, but they also have similar limitations as mentioned above. Finally, survival -to the best of investigators' knowledge- has never been separately studied in patients who cannot receive a stoma reversal procedure. Thus, current study aims to present a single-surgeon experience regarding the rate of diverting ileostomy takedown, the factors adversely affecting stoma reversal rate in patients underwent laparoscopic low anterior resection for rectal cancer, and accordingly to expose the fortune of these cases.

The hypothesis to be proven with this study is that the use of PET/MR on the initial staging of rectal cancers in patients with extramural vascular invasion detected by MR will detect more lesions than conventional work-up and will significantly impact on therapeutic decision, improving disease free and overall survival.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer mortality in Canada. Rectal cancers are now known to be hypoxic which is a negative prognostic factor and predictive of metastatic spread and poor responsiveness to treatment. This has also been shown in preclinical xenograft models. Hence there is a need for identification of hypoxic rectal cancers. In this pilot study the investigators intend to non-invasively assess the tumor and nodal metastasis using an integrated Positron Emission Tomography-Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner (PET/MRI) with 18F-Fluoroazomycin Arabinoside (18F-FAZA) a radiopharmaceutical for assessing tumor hypoxia. The hypoxic rectal tumors will show an increased uptake of 18F-FAZA on PET which will have morphological correlation on MRI. The patient will then undergo neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy (CRT) followed by repeat 18F-FAZA PET/MRI and rectal cancer surgery with pimonidazole staining. Pimonidazole is an extrinsic marker of hypoxia that is selectively reduced and covalently bound to intracellular macromolecules in areas of hypoxia within normal and tumor tissue with current approval for use in humans for research studies. The primary goal of this pilot trial is to validate FAZA-PET as a biomarker of hypoxia by correlating its uptake in rectal tumors to pimonidazole staining in histopathology specimens. If the investigators pilot study successfully demonstrates the uptake and correlation of pimonidazole and FAZA-PET, the investigators would like to initiate a larger study examining hypoxia in rectal cancer. The investigators aims would be to image patients with locally advanced rectal cancer before CRT to ascertain whether high FAZA-PET uptake correlates with poor outcome to CRT. The ability to preoperatively predict the patient sub-population that will respond best to CRT, will help to identify the "complete pathological" responders and avoid unnecessary surgery. Furthermore, the FAZA-PET high subset of patients may benefit from other treatment strategies including clinical trials of anti-hypoxic agents.

This pilot study will take place at Health Sciences North (HSN) in Sudbury. Patients will be identified and screened for inclusion into the study once referred to a general or colorectal surgeon for resection of their rectal cancer. This may occur before or after preoperative chemoradiotherapy (CRT) but randomization will take place after CRT.

The objective of the TransValid-KFO179/GRCSG-Trial-A is the validation of potential biomarkers. These are predictive (Prediction of probability of response to a certain therapy) / prognostic (predicting long-term outcome) microarray-based gene expression signatures and immunohistochemically evaluated biomarkers. The evaluation was done within the KFO179 (www.kfo179.de) - the validation is implemented in this trial. Therefore tumor material of patients undergoing standard radiochemotherapy will be analyzed from pretreatment biopsies an residual tissue from the resection specimen after surgery. This validation and the biomaterial asservation will be incorporated into clinical routine in all participating centers as a model for the treatment of solid tumors. The obtained biomarkers with a predictive and prognostic power will be used to develop an algorithm to predict patients at high risk of local and distant cancer recurrence.

This is a observational cohort study to determine the influence of Transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEM) on patients Quality of Life

In the past decade, colorectal cancer management improved considerably with total mesorectal excision as well as the multidisciplinary management relying on neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy. This forward leap is currently responsible for an increase in the survivorship of colorectal cancer patients to more than 50% at 5 years. Additively the surgical approach is now more inclined towards sphincter preserving procedures, which allows the conservation of body image but can have negative bowel function repercussions consisting of urgency and incontinence ; all these terms encompassed in the low anterior resection syndrome. In the light of these findings many studies developed assessment tools in order to objectively measure this functional alteration among which are the low anterior resection syndrome questionnaire (LARS) and the WEXNER score. These tools designed to assess bowel function after sphincter-preserving surgery are now translated and validated into various languages and used in different countries. The LARS score relies on the frequency of the symptoms and allows the categorization of patients into 3 groups: no LARS (0-20 points), minor LARS (21-29 points), and major LARS (30-42 points). It assesses the frequency of emptying, incontinence ( liquid, gas ), and other symptoms such as urgency and incomplete voiding. On the other hand, the WEXNER score relies on the examination of the frequency of three types of fecal incontinence (solid, liquid, and gas) and their consequences (pad wearing and lifestyle alteration) with frequency options ranging from never (score 0) through to always (meaning at least once per day; score 4). The score ranges from 0 (perfect continence) to 20 (complete incontinence). The aim of our study is to adapt and validate the LARS and WEXNER score to the moroccan arabic dialect.

Though refusal of radical surgery was often happened in rectal cancer patient after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy, little is currently known about the actual oncologic outcome of it. Thus the investigators designed this study to compare the oncologic outcome of unintended rectal preservation with intended rectal preservation by surgeon.