Originally published on Thursday, October 26th, 2006
Archives, Cancer, Diets, Weight Loss by Jeff Jurmain for The Doctors Health Press

Cancer specialists in the U.K. have discovered that bowel cancer patients who get radiotherapy before their surgery have dramatically greater chances of surviving the tumor. The idea is that having a patient take radiotherapy in advance of a tumor being surgically removed can greatly reduce the possibility that the bowel cancer will return years later.

 Radiotherapy is a technique that uses x-rays and other rays to treat disease, and in the past century or so it has been increasingly used in medicine. It started out with the now routine x-ray being used to diagnose a health problem in a patient.

 Today this application has been extended to radiotherapy’s use in treating medical problem. Many cancer patients nowadays receive this as treatment, either via external x- rays or internal therapy. The rays destroy cancerous cells in the area.

 Now, for bowel cancer, doctors surgically remove the actual tumor, but this can leave cancerous cells behind, causing a recurrence in the future. Using radiotherapy before surgery — as a new study has shown — can prevent this. One-third of 1,350 patients received five blasts of radiotherapy over five days before having bowel cancer surgery. The remaining patients had surgery, with 10% receiving chemotherapy afterward if the doctors suspected any cancerous cells were left behind.

 Five years later, the bowel cancer returned in five percent of the radiotherapy patients. As well, 75% of them were still alive. Among the other patients, the cancer returned in 17% of the participants and 67% were still alive. Scientists estimate that using radiotherapy along with good surgical procedures can reduce the risk of recurrence to one percent. This represents the best possible chance a patient has of escaping the tumor altogether and never having to deal with it again.

 This is an example of a very positive finding in an otherwise bleak area. Cancer continues to be one of the world’s greatest medical problems. Since we cannot stop it or prevent it altogether, the most promising advances we can hope for are those that give patients the strongest chance of overcoming a tumor and the best chances of survival.

 Here’s another related idea, which received a firm stamp of approval last year in the U.K.: Based on a study of the diets of 500,000 people, researchers concluded that processed meat, beef, lamb, pork, and veal all increased the risk of bowel cancer. Those who eat two red meat meals a day raise their risk by 35% over those who eat it once a week. As a matter of fact, the World Health Organization has strongly recommended eating more fish and less meat.

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Tags: Diets, Radiation Therapy