Which type of follow-up?

Most patients and many surgeons assume that proactive follow-up after rectal cancer surgery is useful in most cases and therefore an essential part of surgical care. The evidence base for this contention is sparse. What evidence there is suggests that there is little effect on the supervivability of recurrent cancer however intense, costly--or the opposite--the follow-up program may be. This review examines some of the issues in this difficult area, and suggests some reasonable conclusions on what degree of follow-up might be applied in the absence of a wide and easily applicable evidence base.