Colon cancer is a disease that affects the large intestine, an organ that absorbs the nutrients from the food, and stores and eliminates the fecal material. The large intestine has two parts, the colon and the rectum. Colon cancer occurs when tumors appear inside the colon and rectum. These tumors can be malignant, in which case they do not present any danger and they can be removed by a simple surgery, and beningn. Beningn tumors are cancerous tumors that can spread and cause life-threatening complications. If you have been diagnosed with a beningn colon tumor you must begin the colon cancer treatment as soon as possible because if the illness is left untreated it can spread to other organs such as the liver and the lungs.
There are three methods of treating colon cancer - by surgery, radiation therapy and by chemotherapy.
Colon cancer surgery is the most widely-used method of treating the disease. In colon cancer surgery, the part of the colon that has the tumor and the infected tissue on it is removed, and then the remaining parts of the colon are sewn back. Lately, colon cancer surgeries are done with the help of an instrument called laparoscope, which enables the doctors operate through a very small abdominal incision, leaving only a small scar behind.
Radiation therapy is a treatment that involves the use of high energy rays that can kill the cancer cells. The advantage of this method is that it can also kill the cancerous cells that have spread and were not detected yet.
Radiation therapy is required when the cancer has spread to another organ and the surgery can not remove it form there.
The bad part of radiation therapy is that it has side effects that include diarrhea, tiredness or bladder irritation.
Chemotherapy uses special anti cancerous drugs that are injected into the patient's blood and spread through the whole body, killing all the cancerous cells. This kind of therapy is used when the cancer has spread to many places and surgery or radiation therapy can't cover such large areas. Unfortunately chemotherapy has the worst side effects. The most common are loss of hair, loss of appetite, fatigue, easy bruising and bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea.
