title: Surgery, wound healing, and metastasis: recent insights and clinical implications.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Surgery-induced acceleration of tumour growth has been observed since several centuries.
  
  
  METHODS
  We reviewed recent insights from in vitro data, animal experimentation, and clinical studies on how surgery-induced wound healing or resection of a primary cancer influences the tumour-host ecosystem in patients harbouring minimal residual or metastatic disease.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most of the growth factors, chemokines, and cytokines orchestrating surgical wound healing promote tumour growth, invasion, or angiogenesis. In addition, resection of a primary tumour may accelerate synchronous metastatic growth. In the clinical setting, indirect evidence supports the relevance of the above findings. Randomized clinical trials are underway comparing resection versus observation in metastatic breast and colon cancer with asymptomatic primary tumours.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In depth knowledge of how surgical intervention alters the tumour-host-metastasis communicating ecosystems could have important implications for clinical decision making in patients with synchronous metastatic disease and for the design and timing of multimodality treatment strategies.
authors: Department of of Surgery, Ghent University Hospital, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. Electronic address: Wim.ceelen@ugent.be.
authors: Wim
authors: W
authors: Ceelen
authors: Department of of Surgery, Ghent University Hospital, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium.
authors: Piet
authors: P
authors: Pattyn
authors: Department of Radiotherapy and Experimental Cancer Research, Ghent University Hospital, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium.
authors: Marc
authors: M
authors: Mareel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation; D008954:Models, Biological; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000209:etiology / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D013514:Surgical Procedures, Operative / Q000009:adverse effects*; D014945:Wound Healing
keywords: Cancer; Metastasis; Surgery; Wound