[The role of colonoscopy in patient follow-up after surgery for colorectal cancer. A retrospective study and review of the literature].

To improve survival rate after colon or rectum resection for cancer patients should be strictly followed up in order to identify possible local disease relapse or metachronous neoplasia. From October 2002 to January 2006, 864 patients had undergone colonoscopy and 68 were treated surgically for colorectal adenocarcinoma. Of these, 36 were men and 32 women, with a mean age of 63 years. Nineteen of the patients underwent a left colectomy, 28 an anterior resection, 18 a right colectomy and 3 a resection of the transverse colon. For all these patients follow-up program include a colonoscopy performed annually for the first two years, and subsequently, if the results were negative, after a further three and then five years. Out of 68 patients, 2 showed suspect anastomotic recurrence, which proved to be granulomas at the histological examination. In addition, in 11 cases, there were 3 right colon adenomatous polyps, 2 transverse colon polyps (one villous and the other tubular), 5 descending colon polyps (three tubular and two villous) and 1 tubulo-villous polyp of the rectum. No metachronous neoplasias were observed. An examination of the data resulting from our own 68 cases shows that, in spite of the fact that no local disease relapse or metachronous neoplasia was observed, the identification of 11 polyps would suggest that the use of colonoscopy in such patients might be the gold standard for early diagnosis of recurrences and new polyps.