Colorectal Cancer

What is colorectal cancer?
Colorectal cancer is a malignant tumor of the large intestine. Unlike benign tumors, malignant tumors can invade surrounding organs and spread to other regions of the body through the lymphatic system or bloodstream.

Who is at risk?
Over 150,000 Americans are diagnosed every year with this cancer. Over 90% of the patients are over age 40, at which point the risk doubles every ten years. Other high risk factors include a family history of colorectal cancer or polyps, the presence of ulcerative colitis, a history of uterine, ovarian or breast cancer.

What are the signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer?
The more common ones are:

Which test(s) and/or procedure(s) can diagnose colorectal cancer?
and procedures that detect colorectal cancer include a digital rectal exam, x-ray with barium enema, colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, and fecal occult blood test.

How is colorectal cancer treated?
The majority of colorectal cancers are treated by surgical removal. The goal of surgery is to remove the colon cancer and the adjacent lymph nodes which may contain microscopic tumor cells. The lymph nodes lie adjacent to the blood vessels. All of our operations are standardized to include the lymph nodes draining the section of colon being removed. We typically remove the pericolonic lymph nodes (red and purple) as well as the highest lymph nodes or N4 regional lymph nodes (green) to maximize the likelihood of cure.

We have extensive experience removing cancers of both the colon and rectum via a completely laparoscopic "band-aid" approach.

References: Blumberg D and Ramanathan RK. Treatment of Colon and Rectal Cancer. J Clin Gastroenterol, 2002; 34: 15-26.