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5 treatment settings, 3 with more than one named option. Each section lays out the options the standard of care names, what each is for, the trials behind them with their recorded results, the side effects and cautions on record, and questions to ask. Built from the cancer page's standard-of-care rows; nothing here is advice for your case.
Answer a few questions from a report and read the guideline statement that applies, quoted word for word with its source. Educational aids, not advice.
Total mesorectal excision, increasingly robotic or laparoscopic; transanal local excision for small, well-differentiated T1 tumours; no radiotherapy.
Surgeons operate through small incisions using robotic arms with tremor-free precision and 3D vision.
MRI uses a strong magnet and radio waves, with no ionising radiation, to picture soft tissue in finer contrast than CT, so it is the standard scan for brain tumours, prostate, rectal cancer staging, liver lesions and breast screening in high-risk women. It is slow, expensive and blurred by movement.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Total neoadjuvant therapy: short-course radiotherapy then CAPOX or FOLFOX (RAPIDO), or induction mFOLFIRINOX then chemoradiation (PRODIGE 23); chemoradiation then consolidation chemotherapy when organ preservation is the goal (OPRA); surgery or watch and wait for complete responders.
CAPOX pairs the oral fluoropyrimidine capecitabine with intravenous oxaliplatin as a pill-based alternative to FOLFOX. For low-risk stage III colon cancer three months after surgery works as well as six and halves nerve damage; it is also standard in gastric cancer, with hand-foot syndrome as its price.
FOLFOX is the workhorse chemotherapy combination for bowel cancer, used after surgery to cure and in advanced disease as the backbone that targeted drugs are added to.
Fewer, larger daily doses instead of the classic five to seven weeks of small ones. Large trials in breast and prostate cancer showed the same control with the same or fewer late effects and far less time in hospital.
Averages across everyone diagnosed, often years ago. A median is the middle of a group: half the people counted lived longer than the figure shown, and some lived far longer. Your stage, subtype, age, fitness and the treatment you receive matter more than the average, and the numbers are improving quickly.
Averages across everyone diagnosed, often years ago. A median is the middle of a group: half the people counted lived longer than the figure shown, and some lived far longer. Your stage, subtype, age, fitness and the treatment you receive matter more than the average, and the numbers are improving quickly.
Averages across everyone diagnosed, often years ago. A median is the middle of a group: half the people counted lived longer than the figure shown, and some lived far longer. Your stage, subtype, age, fitness and the treatment you receive matter more than the average, and the numbers are improving quickly.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Six cycles of FOLFOX with chemoradiation only if the tumour shrinks by less than 20 percent (PROSPECT), then total mesorectal excision.
FOLFOX is the workhorse chemotherapy combination for bowel cancer, used after surgery to cure and in advanced disease as the backbone that targeted drugs are added to.
Averages across everyone diagnosed, often years ago. A median is the middle of a group: half the people counted lived longer than the figure shown, and some lived far longer. Your stage, subtype, age, fitness and the treatment you receive matter more than the average, and the numbers are improving quickly.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Six months of dostarlimab or another PD-1 antibody with non-operative management for complete responders; surgery reserved for the rare non-responder.
Dostarlimab is a PD-1 blocker famous for making rectal cancer disappear without surgery in every patient with a mismatch-repair-deficient tumour.
Primary endpoint (sustained cCR at 12 months) met; rates pending congress presentation.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
As metastatic colorectal cancer: doublet chemotherapy with bevacizumab or, for RAS and BRAF wild-type left-sided tumours, an anti-EGFR antibody; primary tumour managed by symptoms; liver-limited disease resected.
FOLFOX is the workhorse chemotherapy combination for bowel cancer, used after surgery to cure and in advanced disease as the backbone that targeted drugs are added to.
FOLFIRI is the other backbone bowel-cancer chemotherapy, swapping oxaliplatin for irinotecan. Used first or second line and, since 2026, with the BRAF combination.
Bevacizumab is a humanised antibody that soaks up VEGF-A, the signal tumours use to grow new blood vessels. Approved in 2004, it partners chemotherapy in colorectal, ovarian, cervical, lung, kidney and liver cancer and glioblastoma, and adds to trifluridine/tipiracil in late-line bowel cancer; hypertension, protein in the urine and bleeding are its characteristic side effects.
Cetuximab is a chimeric antibody that blocks the EGFR growth receptor. It is used with FOLFIRI or FOLFOX in RAS wild-type, left-sided bowel cancer, with encorafenib in BRAF V600E disease, with KRAS G12C inhibitors, and with radiation or chemotherapy in head and neck cancer; RAS-mutant tumours gain nothing and may be harmed, so RAS testing comes first.
Panitumumab is a fully human EGFR antibody, the preferred first-line partner for chemotherapy in left-sided, RAS-normal bowel cancer after the PARADIGM trial.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.