Treating a Bowel Cancer:

Treating of bowel cancer depends on the size of tumor, it’s location and whether it is confined locally or has spread in other parts of body. Following are various options available:

Surgery

In case one decides for surgery, the part of large bowl affected with cancer, shall be excised for removal along with lymph bodes in the region, due to very likely chance, that lymph nodes are also affected in bowel cancer. The open ends of the large bowl are sutured together.

In certain circumstances based on the location and size of cancer of the bowl removed, the two ends of the bowls can not be joined together. In such situation, the opening, which is nearest to the beginning of bowel, is brought out through the abdominal wall. Such an opening is called colostomy if the large bowl is connected to abdominal wall. A bag is attached to the opening to collect the contents of bowl movement, which are thrown out, when the bag gets filled.

If small bowel is connected to the abdominal wall it is called ileostomy. The opening itself is known as stoma. In most of surgeries such an opening is not required. The opening is of a temporary nature for a short period, till other measures can be devised.

In case there is cancer in the rectum. One requires surgery for removal of the affected portion of rectum along with fatty tissues along with lymph nodes around rectum. There are more chances of performing colostomy in cases of rectal cancer.

Non-surgical treatment Options:

In few cases the entire removal of cancer affected is not possible, requiring Chemotherapy and radiotherapy as additional therapy, which are administered to destroy any cancer cell, which could not be removed by surgery and prevent spread of cancer to other parts of body. Chemotherapy under certain circumstances is used to achieve reduction in size if tumor before initiating surgery.

Sometimes it’s not possible to remove all the cancer by surgery, so you may need to have additional treatment with chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy.