Extralevator abdominoperineal excision and pelvic exenteration are mutilating operations that leave wide perineal wounds. Such large wounds are prone to infection and perineal herniation, and their closure is a major concern to most surgeons. Different approaches to the perineal repair exist, varying from primary or mesh closure to myocutaneous flaps. Each technique has its own associated advan...

BACKGROUND: Locally advanced colorectal cancers form a distinct subgroup where contiguous organs could be involved without distant metastases and so may be amenable to curative surgical resection. It was our objective to report our experience in treating six such patients with operable locally advanced colorectal carcinomas. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the case notes of 47 patients who...

Indications for total pelvic exenteration in a male (removal of the bladder, prostate and rectum) and in a woman (removal bladder, uterus, vagina, ovaries and rectum) are rare. The advanced stage generally dictates that the patient has some form of chemotherapy or radiotherapy, or a combination of two to shrink/debulk the tumour. We report the first two cases of a salvage laparoscopic total pel...

Becoming aware of the article of Cibula et al. (Cibula et al., 2017) entitled “Pelvic floor reconstruction by modified rectus abdominis myoperitoneal (MRAM) flap after pelvic exenterations” in Gynecologic Oncology made me curious: Has the rectus musculoperitoneal flap, a slimmed version of the transversus and rectus abdominis musculoperitoneal flap developed by us 20 years ago (Höckel, 1996; Ko...