Christopher Willett

The leadership position of a departmental chair can be a positive and rewarding opportunity. These rewards principally stem from the success of the faculty, trainees, staff, and everyone supporting the department. With healthcare reform and the constraints of the federal budget, increasing attention and time has become directed toward administrative management. Formal courses and training in executive leadership and business management may be helpful in enhancing knowledge and skills in these disciplines. There are multiple and often competing constituencies and agendas requiring thoughtful strategies to achieve departmental goals. The objectives of the chair are advancing patient care, education, and research as well as a continual presence and visibility in the department. The true excellence of a department is achieved by the innovation of its faculty and trainees.

This selection from the NCCN Guidelines for Rectal Cancer focuses on management of malignant polyps and resectable nonmetastatic rectal cancer because important updates have been made to these guidelines. These recent updates include redrawing the algorithms for stage II and III disease to reflect new data supporting the increasingly prominent role of total neoadjuvant therapy, expanded recommendations for short-course radiation therapy techniques, and new recommendations for a "watch-and-wait" nonoperative management technique for patients with cancer that shows a complete response to neoadjuvant therapy. The complete version of the NCCN Guidelines for Rectal Cancer, available online at NCCN.org, covers additional topics including risk assessment, pathology and staging, management of metastatic disease, posttreatment surveillance, treatment of recurrent disease, and survivorship.