Abstract: Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy has been used as a standard treatment for patients with locally advanced (T3 and T4) rectal carcinoma. A proportion of the patients received neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy present with a pathological complete response (pCR), an entity defined as absence of any tumor cell. In Habr-Gama's reseach, immediate surgery was avoided by for highly selected patients. Those patients who sustained a complete clinical response(cCR) for at least 12months did no worse than those who had surgery over the same period of time with no residual cancer at pathological evaluation.Further researches are still needed to investigate whether it is safe to avoid and just wait and see for highly selected patients.

Key words: Rectal neoplasms, Neoadjuvant therapy, Wait and see