These findings suggest that important advances have occurred in the prevention, early detection, and treatment of this disease. Numerous studies have documented an important role for adjuvant therapy for colorectal cancer.
Colorectal cancer can lead to blood-borne metastases in vital organs such as liver and lung.
Even in this setting, available therapies such as surgical resection, with or without regional cytotoxic therapy, can be curative in highly selected cases. For patients whose disease cannot be cured, standard treatment options focus on the use of a relatively small repertoire of chemotherapeutic drugs. Other new agents for colorectal cancer are analogs or prodrugs in the same class as 5-FU and have the advantage of oral administration. An investigational agent, oxaliplatin, has been widely tested in both Europe and the United States and should soon be included in the list of available agents. Many new discoveries in the last decade have the potential for improving the management of colorectal cancer.