'Watch-and-Wait' strategy may help rectal cancer patients to safely evade surgery

'Watch-and-Wait' strategy may help rectal cancer patients to safely evade surgery

'Watch-and-Wait' strategy may help rectal cancer patients to safely evade surgery

A team of doctors and scientists from the Champalimaud Clinical Centre in Lisbon, Portugal, and the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, has shown that patients with "low" rectal cancer (that is, very close to the anus) who show no sign of their tumors after a course of radio- and chemotherapy can safely choose to postpone invasive and complication-prone surgical procedures.