Surgery continues to be central in colorectal cancer treatment.

In this short video, surgeon Pedro Vieira describes the state-of-art practice of colorectal surgery at the Champalimaud Foundation, with a particular emphasis on robotic surgery, the gold standard in rectal surgery, and minimally invasive surgery, which Digestive Unit surgeons favour whenever possible.

There are different ways to classify cancers: for instance, by the organ (or tissue) in which they originate, and by the type of cells they involve. Cancers can be solid (tumour-forming) or liquid (blood cancers).

Using the first method yields more than 200 different types of cancer. In alphabetical order, the most common are: bladder cancer, breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, endometrial cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia (blood cancer), liver cancer, lung cancer melanoma (skin cancer), non-Hodgkin lymphoma, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and thyroid cancer.

The past 10 years have witnessed a doubling of colorectal cancers (CRC) in people under 50 years of age – from 5% to 10% of all cases. Just in the US, between 2008 and 2015, this increase was over 60%!

When we hear about someone having been diagnosed with “stage IV” cancer, most of us know this is very bad news. It is the most advanced overall cancer stage.

Classifying – or staging – a cancer is paramount to determining the cancer’s prognosis (its likely evolution) and to choose the most appropriate treatment. A misclassified cancer can lead to wrong treatment options, including undertreatment or overtreatment.

Scientists and doctors at the Champalimaud Foundation, in Lisbon, have joined efforts to reduce the toxicity of so-called “neoadjuvant chemoradiation” – the combination of chemotherapy plus radiotherapy – for the treatment of rectal cancer. If further confirmed, their results, published a few months ago in the journal Frontiers in Oncology, could in the not-so-distant future help many patients with rectal cancer, especially the more elderly and frail ones.