Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery versus surgery alone in high-risk patients with resectable colorectal liver metastases: The CHARISMA randomized multicenter clinical trial

Background Efforts to improve the outcome of liver surgery by combining curative resection with chemotherapy have failed to demonstrate definite overall survival benefit. This may partly be due to the fact that these studies often involve strict inclusion criteria. Consequently, patients with a high risk profile as characterized by Fong’s Clinical Risk Score (CRS) are often underrepresented in these studies. Conceptually, this group of patients might benefit the most from chemotherapy. The present study evaluates the impact of neo-adjuvant chemotherapy in high-risk patients with primary resectable colorectal liver metastases, without extrahepatic disease. Our hypothesis is that adding neo-adjuvant chemotherapy to surgery will provide an improvement in overall survival (OS) in patients with a high-risk profile.