Rehabilitation of patients after repeated operations for cancer of colon and rectum.

The authors investigated social and occupational rehabilitation of patients treated at N.N. Petrov Research Institute of Oncology for cancer recurrences in colon and rectum (96 cases), for metachronic neoplasms (40 cases), and also for patients accepted for coloplasty after Hartmann operation (11 cases). The term of hospitalization in cancer recurrences was 15.9 +/- 2.5 months; in metachronic tumors, 77.1 +/- 9.9 months; and for the patients accepted for coloplasty, from 6 to 12 months. The period of patients' survival after radical operations in cases of metachronic tumors is twice as long as in recurrences and approaches, on the average, five years. The patients operated upon for their metachronic tumors are characterized by a high degree of social and occupational readaptation (about 80%) in comparison with patients with tumor recurrences (30%). All the patients who had undergone coloplasty were subsequently completely readapted from a social point of view, which was due to the elimination of a fecal fistula.