Treatment of Rectal Cancer

Answer 1

Patients that suffer from rectal cancer have a handful of treatment for cancer options available to them when it comes to being treated for the cancer. After all of the necessary tests have been performed by the doctor to make sure that the patient is indeed suffering from rectal cancer, the doctor then needs to determine what stage the cancer is in at the time of diagnosis. Rectal cancer is responsible for the deaths of over 600,000 people per year across the world and can be curable if it is found in its early stages of the disease. If the cancer is found in the latter stages of the disease then it is more difficult to cure. The most unlikely point of the disease for it to be cured is when metastases happens and the cancer spreads to other areas of the body.

Common Treatment Options

The most common treatment options for rectal cancer include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. Surgery is divided into five different categories; curative, palliative, bypass, fecal diversion and open-or-close. If the tumor is localized then curative surgery will be used. Curative surgery includes the removal of polyps that might be found during a colonoscopy or the removal of a piece of the colon where the tumor is located in the early stages of rectal cancer. Palliative surgery is used when there is multiple metastases of the tumor and a resection of the tumor is offered to prevent further morbidity. If the tumor has invaded vital structures in the area close to the original tumor this will make excision extremely difficult to perform. Because of this the surgeon might elect to bypass the tumor and perform a proximal fecal diversion through a stoma. A stoma is a surgically created opening that connects a portion of the body cavity to the outside environment. Doctors fear having to perform an open-and-close surgery because it is the worst case scenario involving rectal cancer. This type of surgery is when the doctors find that the tumor is unresectable and the small bowel is involved. Once the doctors find this to be true, any more procedures would do more harm than good.

Other Treatment Options

The other two most common forms of treatment when dealing with rectal cancer are chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Chemotherapy is used to reduce the chance of metastases occurring while also attempting to shrink the tumor or slow the growth of the tumor at the same time. Chemotherapy can be applied once the surgery is complete, before the surgery takes place, or as the primary therapy. Radiation therapy is when radiation is used instead of chemotherapy to treat rectal cancer.