Circulating tumor cells in right-and left-sided colorectal cancer
Molecular alterations are not randomly distributed in colorectal cancer (CRC), but rather clustered on the basis of primary tumor location underlying the importance of colorectal cancer sidedness. We aimed to investigate whether circulating tumor cells (CTC) characterization might help clarify how different the patterns of dissemination might be relative to the behavior of left-(LCC) compared to right-sided (RCC) cancers. We retrospectively analyzed patients with metastatic CRC who had undergone standard baseline CTC evaluation before starting any first-line systemic treatment.