What treatment do patients with colon cancer need

At present, the treatment of colon cancer is mainly surgical resection, supplemented by intraoperative radiotherapy to prevent recurrence. However, if it is late-stage colon cancer, it can only prolong life. For patients with early-stage colon cancer, most do not need radiotherapy or chemotherapy, but only surgical resection. The following is a summary of the specific treatments for colon cancer:

1. Radiotherapy for colorectal cancer

1. Preoperative radiotherapy for rectal cancer It is generally believed that preoperative radiotherapy can increase the survival rate by 10-15% and reduce the local recurrence rate by 10-15%. Preoperative radiotherapy can prevent the spread of cancer cells during surgery, reduce local and pelvic implantation, reduce the tumor, expand the indications for surgery, loosen cancerous adhesions, and increase the surgical resection rate.

2. Intraoperative radiotherapy can further kill residual tumor cells after surgery, reduce local recurrence rate, improve survival rate and reduce radiation damage to normal tissues.

3. Intraoperative catheter implantation and postoperative radiotherapy: The source device is implanted during the operation. 2-3 days after the operation, after the vital signs are stable, continuous treatment is adopted and 30-40Gy radiotherapy is given to the lesion within 3-5 days.

4. Postoperative radiotherapy Postoperative radiotherapy is an auxiliary radiotherapy and a very important supplementary treatment for surgical treatment.

5. Intracavitary radiotherapy for rectal cancer has the characteristics of high local dose and low peripheral dose. It can effectively control and eliminate local lesions and is an effective supplementary treatment for external radiotherapy.

6. Radical external irradiation Radical radiotherapy alone is mainly suitable for a small number of patients with early stage tumors and those with particularly sensitive cell types. It can also be used for cases with small and active tumors, but with contraindications for surgery due to serious cardiovascular diseases. Multi-field anterior and posterior irradiation is used, with a total irradiation dose of 50Gy/5-6 weeks.

7. Palliative radiotherapy For patients who cannot tolerate surgery due to poor general condition, radiotherapy can be used as a palliative treatment to alleviate symptoms and even prolong survival. The radiotherapy technique is the same as preoperative radiotherapy.

2. Chemotherapy

80-90% of colorectal cancer is differentiated adenocarcinoma, which proliferates slowly and has strong resistance to chemotherapy. The effective rate of chemotherapy is between 20% and 30%. The indications for chemotherapy are: (1) Patients who cannot undergo surgery due to tumor recurrence after surgery. (2) Patients whose tumors are large and difficult to remove surgically can first undergo chemotherapy to shrink the tumor before surgery. (3) Patients with distant metastasis who cannot undergo surgery.

If surgical resection is used alone, it has a good therapeutic effect in the early stage, but the surgical treatment of middle and late stage colon cancer is relatively simple in treatment, leading to repeated recurrence. Therefore, intraoperative radiotherapy is used for treatment. Since the therapeutic effect of radiotherapy on patients before and after surgery is not obvious, it is required to be used during surgery.