Bowel cancer - Treatments
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Cancers that grow in your bowel are treatable. You have a good chance of being cured if the cancer hasn't spread outside the wall of your colon or rectum. Your colon and rectum are parts of your bowel.
You may hear bowel cancer called colon cancer, rectal cancer or colorectal cancer. It's a serious condition, but there are good treatments. You may not get any symptoms to start with, so finding out that you have cancer can be a shock.
Surgery is the main treatment. When the cancer is caught early it can almost always be cured by surgery.
Key points about treating bowel cancer
- Your treatment will depend on how big your cancer is, whether it has spread, what it looks like under a microscope and how healthy you are.
- About 9 in 10 people with this cancer can have surgery. For the other 1 in 10 people, their cancer has probably spread to other parts of their body, so surgery will not help them to live any longer.[1] [2]
- Many people worry that after surgery they'll need to wear a colostomy bag to collect their bowel movements. In fact, only 1 in 8 people with colon or rectal cancer need a permanent colostomy.[3] (These numbers come from the US. Similar numbers weren't available for the UK.)
- Chemotherapy after surgery can help you live longer, but it has unpleasant side effects.
- Radiotherapy before surgery for rectal cancer can reduce the chances that your cancer will come back. But radiotherapy has unpleasant side effects.
- Seeing your doctor for follow-up check-ups after your treatment may help detect whether your cancer has come back or spread to another part of your body.
- If you have rectal cancer, an operation called total mesorectal excision may help you live longer. This surgery removes the part of your rectum that contains the cancer as well as the fatty tissue around your rectum.
Treatments for bowel cancer
We've carefully weighed up the research and divided the treatments into the categories below.
You can find more about each treatment by clicking on the links below.
For help in deciding which treatment is best for you, see .
Usual treatment (most people have this treatment)
- Surgery: You will probably need surgery to cut out the cancer. Your surgeon will also cut out some healthy tissue around the tumour to try to get rid of any cancer cells that are left. There aren't many studies to test if surgery will cure you or stop the cancer growing and blocking your bowel. This is why we can't say the research proves that surgery works. But most doctors would say that you need to have the cancer cut out. More...
Treatments that work
- Chemotherapy: This treatment uses drugs to kill cancer cells. Chemotherapy is often used to kill cancer cells that might be left after surgery. The drugs used for bowel cancer change all the time as new ones become available. But fluorouracil has been the main drug for more than 40 years. More...
Treatments that are likely to work
- Regular follow-up: After you've finished your treatment your doctors will want you to come back for check-ups. This is to make sure that if the cancer does come back it can be treated quickly. More...
Treatments that work, but whose harms may outweigh benefits
- Radiotherapy before surgery for rectal cancer: Radiotherapy is used before surgery to shrink the tumour and kill any stray cancer cells. It is usually used for cancer in the rectum. More...
Treatments that need further study
- Total mesorectal excision for rectal cancer: This operation is used only for cancer of the rectum. The surgeon cuts out the part of the bowel with the cancer in it and the fatty tissue around the bowel. More...
Other treatments
Your doctor may suggest the treatments listed below for bowel cancer. They are all newer drugs to treat cancer. But we haven't yet weighed up the evidence for them in the same way as we have for the treatments above.
References
- Skibber JM, Minsky BD, Hoff PM. Cancer of the colon. In: DeVita VT Jr, Hellman S, Rosenberg SA (editors). Cancer of the colon. 6th edition. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, Philadelphia, U.S.A.; 2001.
- Skibber JM, Minsky BD, Hoff PM. Cancer of the rectum. In: DeVita VT Jr, Hellman S, Rosenberg SA (editors). Cancer of the colon. 6th edition. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, Philadelphia, U.S.A.; 2001.
- American Cancer Society Colorectal cancer facts and figures: Special edition 2005 Available at: http://www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/CAFF2005CR4PWSecured.pdf (accessed on 10 May 2006)
© BMJ Publishing Group Limited ("BMJ Group") 2007. All rights reserved
This information does not replace medical advice. If you are concerned you might have a medical problem please ask your Boots pharmacy team in your local Boots store, or see your doctor.
