Colorectal cancer (CRC) affects nearly 1.4 million new patients each year worldwide.1 The treatment algorithm for local or locally advanced colon and rectal cancer (RC), and also for patients with never-resectable metastases, is well established.2–4 However, the optimal strategy in patients with synchronous metastasis is more controversial and, especially in patients with RC, several modalities must be combined to achieve the most favorable outcome. Before the introduction of total mesorectal excision (TME) a local recurrence was frequently seen in 30–40% of patients with locally advanced RC.5 Neoadjuvant long-course chemo-radiation (LC-CRT) or short-course radiotherapy (SC-RT) followed by appropriate TME has reduced local recurrence (LR) rates to 5% or even less as shown not only in randomized trial with selected patients but also in population cohorts.6,7 However, the role and timing of neoadjuvant radiation is less well defined in patients presenting with synchronous metastasis. Randomized studies have focused on one treatment modality (e.g. preoperative LC-CRT or SC-RT in patients with resectable RC or chemotherapy in the setting of widespread nonresectable metastatic disease) but the sequence of different modalities (surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation) has not been studied in a randomized strategy trial. Based on lack of consensus regarding the optimal sequence of surgery, systemic therapy and radiotherapy for patients with stage 4 RC treated with curative intent, a ‘multidisciplinary session: synchronous liver metastases in RC: which treatment first?’ was organized by the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and presented during the ESMO 2017 conference in Madrid, Spain. Three distinct lectures focused on the radiation therapy perspective, the surgical oncology perspective, and the medical oncology perspective. The present paper is a summary of those three lectures with focus on a multidisciplinary approach and with an update on recent literature
