Surgery for colorectal metastases has established itself in the last couple of decades and is now mainstay of treatment for stage IV colorectal patients, provided that the metastases are deemed resectable. To further specify the role of surgery in this patient category, numerous aspects still need to be elucidated. In the present thesis, we aimed to address some of these aspects.
In Part I, the important technical issue of organ preserving surgery is discussed.
Part II focused on the question whether we can predict the outcome of patients after surgery, so as to define which patients are expected to have most benefit of surgery, and possibly to define which patients are likely to benefit from multimodality therapy.
Part III is dedicated to the role of surgery within the multimodality treatment that is nowadays standard-of-care especially in patients with synchronously metastasized (locally advanced) colorectal cancer.