FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 351:1790-1792 October 21, 2004 Number 17 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text PDF PDA Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited E-mail When Letters Appear Related Article by Sauer, R. PubMed Citation

Although colon cancer and rectal cancer share many features, clinicians should be aware of important differences in the clinical behavior and treatment of these two distinct diseases. Prominent among these is the tendency for rectal cancer — but not colon cancer — to recur locally. Local recurrence of rectal cancer is often catastrophic: it is difficult to cure, and the associated symptoms are debilitating. Accordingly, preventing local recurrence is one of the main goals of rectal-cancer treatment.

In 1990, a National Institutes of Health consensus conference recommended postoperative adjuvant chemoradiotherapy for patients with stage II rectal cancer (node-negative disease with . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

From the Division of Colon and Rectal Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Aschele, C., Lonardi, S. (2007). Multidisciplinary treatment of rectal cancer: medical oncology.. Ann Oncol 18: 1908-1915 [Full Text]