Chemoradiation Alone with a Watch-and-Wait Surgical Approach

摘要

The conventional treatment for clinical T3 and/or node-positive rectal cancer is preoperative chemoradiation followed by surgery and postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy. There are clinical settings where surgery is not performed, for example, for patients with-early stage tumors or medically inoperable disease, and for those who have refused surgery following a favorable response to preoperative chemoradiation. In these settings, radiation is delivered by a variety of techniques including endocavitary (contact) treatment, brachytherapy, and pelvic external beam. This review will focus on patients who receive treatment with pelvic radiation or chemoradiation without surgery.