Colon Cancer Treatment Options

Colon cancer treatment options will vary depending on the stage of colon cancer and the patient’s personal preference.

Surgery for Different Stages of Colon Cancer

If you’re in the beginning stages of colon cancer, it might be possible for the polyps to simply be removed and that would be the end of the treatment. For more advanced colon cancers, it might be possible for the polyps and other affected areas of the colon to be removed as well, though chemotherapy and radiation might need to be used as well. In advanced colon cancer cases, the entire colon may need to be removed as well as cancerous tumors in the rest of the body. However, in most cases of advanced cancer, most treatments are not going to be curative, but rather palliative.

Radiation Therapy

Some patients may have polyps which could be shrunk by radiation treatments. These treatments would target the tumors again and again until the polyps began to shrink. Often, doctors will not use this treatment for earlier stages of cancer, but it can be quite helpful in later stages if other treatments aren’t working.

Chemotherapy

With the use of chemotherapy drugs, a patient can begin to kill off the cancer cells in the body, though healthy cells will also be destroyed. For some, chemotherapy isn’t used until the later stages, or it can be used in conjunction with other treatments. Many patients will experience side effects of nausea, cancer fatigue, and hair loss when they undergo chemotherapy treatments.

Medication Therapies

Recently, new advanced in targeted medications have been shown to be successful with certain cases of colon cancer, including:

• Panitumumab
• Bevacizumab
• Cetuximab

These medications are used for later stages of colon cancer when other treatments have not worked.

Your doctor or oncologist may recommend some or all of these treatments in order to help you begin to see fewer cancer symptoms and to help you enter remission.