Patients and study design
From January 2012 to February 2020, four-hundred seventy-six patients underwent elective laparoscopic colorectal resection for benign or malignant disease at the Division of General and Hepatobiliary Surgery, University of Verona Hospital Trust. Exclusion criteria were inflammatory bowel disease (n = 21), familial adenomatous polyposis (n = 6), and mortality within post-operative day (POD) 5 (n = 2). All patients with missing data or pre-operative CT imaging in our Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) were also excluded from analysis (n = 90).
This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University Hospital of Verona, Italy (reference number “58642 - CRINF-1560CESC”). All patients provided written informed consent.