A watch-and-wait approach for locally advanced rectal cancer after a clinical complete response following neoadjuvant chemoradiation: a systematic review and meta-analysis

A watch-and-wait approach for patients with clinical complete response to neoadjuvant chemoradiation could avoid the morbidity of conventional surgery for rectal cancer. However, the safety of this approach is unclear. We synthesised the evidence for watch-and-wait as a treatment for rectal cancer.We systematically searched MEDLINE, Embase, and the grey literature (up to June 28, 2016) for studies of patients with rectal adenocarcinoma managed...