Approaches for treatment of common colon cancer & 98. Approaches for treatment of common rectal cancer
Most resources deal with colon and rectal cancer together (treatment of colorectal cancer), so we’ll do the same here. Treatment can be cure or palliation, options include surgery (for early stage), chemotherapy, radiation (in combination with chemotherapy for rectal cancer, never in colon cancer), and immunotherapy.
Surgery
- Early stage, this is prefered method, often with chemotherapy as adjuvant or neoadjuvant therapy
Chemotherapy
- In both colon and rectal cancers. Not generally used in early stage of disease (surgery is sufficient) however in stage III and IV chemotherapy is a core part of treatment.
- Drugs include fluorouracil, capecitabine or oxaliplatin increase life expectancy.
- For palliative care, chemotherapy is first line choice
Radiation therapy
- The bowel is highly sensitive to radiation so we do not use radiotherapy for colon cancer
- It is sometimes used in neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy in rectal cancer. Specifically brachy radiotherapy.
Immunotherapy
- Ongoing research into the field.
Targeted therapy-
- If there is a RAS or EGFR mutation, can do targeted therapy