Disease specific questionnaire including sub scales for laxative and constipating diet, presence of diarrhoea and constipation, faecal and urinary incontinence, social and emotional functioning, body image, physical symptoms and sexual functioning. Each item is phrased as a multiple-choice question with four response options; never, once in a while, often and very often. Responses are linearly transformed on a 0-100 scale with a higher score indicating better QOL.

Based on a generic SF-36 questionnaire subscaled into perception of health, physical functioning, physical role functioning, emotional functioning and emotional role functioning. Each question is phrased as a multiple-choice question with varying options depending on the type of question.

At our centre three different types of surgical approaches have been employed: Soave operation, Low anterior resection (Rehbeins operation) and trans-anal pullthrough. These outcomes will be correlated to outcomes of quality of life in other to compare the resulting quality of life between the different surgical approaches.

Data will be retrieved through electronic medical journals. Data such as short term and long term major postoperative complications will be gathered in order to compare prevalence of surgical complications to type of surgical approach.