Colorectal Cancer Treatments

Being diagnosed with colorectal cancer might seem like the end of the road. However, colorectal cancer remains one of the most treatable cancers, especially if it is detected early enough.

If you or your loved ones have been recently diagnosed, your doctor may recommend different treatments depending on the cancer stage, but what are the treatments that are currently available?

In most colorectal cancer cases, surgery is required to remove the tumor. Particularly for tumors localized in the colon, this method of treatment is an effective way to remove large tumors, or even whole sections of the colon, the fat around it and nearby lymph nodes where the tumor is located.

Healthy sections of the colon and rectum are usually reattached; in instances where this isn’t possible, a hole known as a stoma is made in your abdomen and the severed end of the colon is attached to it. A bag used to collect solid waste is attached to the skin around the hole in a process referred to as colostomy. This is usually a temporary measure for colon cancer patients to give the colon time to heal, but a permanent colostomy may be required in more severe rectal cancers.

Chemotherapy (or colloquially ‘chemo’), in a nutshell, uses strong drugs to kill cancerous cells and prevent them from growing and spreading. The chemotherapy drugs can be administered in different ways.

In systemic chemotherapy, the drugs are either injected into the veins or administered orally so that the drug can reach most areas of the body.

Regional chemotherapy, on the other hand, is more targeted. Rather than the vein, the chemotherapy drugs are injected into an artery leading to the part of the body with cancer. This helps target the chemotherapy treatment at the affected area and lower the side effects by minimizing the reach of the drug to other parts of the body. Despite this, it should be noted that the healthy cells in the targeted region will still be affected and be damaged by the chemotherapy drug.

Chemotherapy is also typically administered in cycles. These cycles can vary; in some cases, only one dose of the drug is given at the start of the cycle. In other instances, the drug could be given a few days in a row. A rest period usually follows to allow time for the body to recover from the drug’s side effects.

As the name suggests, immunotherapy helps the patient’s immune system to combat the cancer. While this treatment method is showing promise, it depends largely on the biomarkers that are detected in the patient.

The basis of immunotherapy depends on the presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), special immune cells that indicate that the body is responding to the presence of tumors.

Some of the immunotherapy types available for colorectal cancer treatment include immune checkpoint inhibitors, which enhance the TILs’ ability to respond more strongly to cancer cells. Another type of immunotherapy uses monoclonal antibodies, specially designed proteins to bind specific targets on cancer cells so that they are more easily detected and destroyed by the immune system.

Cancer is rarely caused by one single factor; cancerous lesions and tumors can arise as a result of a combination of mutations and changes in the body. In targeted therapy, treatment is focused on addressing these factors that contribute to cancer growth and survival. Targeted therapy works to inhibit cancer cell growth and spread by targeting specific genes, proteins or tissue.

For colorectal cancer, targeted treatments include anti-angiogenesis therapy, which stops the creation of new blood vessels and thereby prevents cancer cells from receiving the nutrients required to grow, and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors, which block receptors on cancer cells that promote growth and differentiation.

Before you decide on a treatment plan, you may want to ask more questions of your doctors, or consider seeking a second or third opinion on your diagnosis and treatment, especially if novel treatments or clinical trials are being recommended to you. Ultimately, your treatment plan should be tailored according to your cancer and circumstances so that you can focus on recovery.