Study: Radiation Before Surgery Cuts Risk of Rectal Cancer Recurrence

Radiation treatments given prior to surgery appear to significantly reduce the risk of local recurrence and death from rectal cancer, according to researchers at the Colorectal Cancer Collaborative Group.

Researchers reported in The Lancet on their analysis of data from 8,507 patients in 22 trials of radiotherapy treatment before or after rectal cancer surgery.

Radiotherapy is usually given before rectal cancer surgery in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and other European countries but is often given after surgery in the United Kingdom and North America.

"We found there were about half as many local recurrences in those who had preoperative radiotherapy compared to those who had surgery alone," said Richard Gray from the University of Birmingham in England and co-author of the study.

"We also found that fewer patients who had preoperative radiotherapy died from rectal cancer than did those who had surgery alone (45 percent vs. 50 percent) but early deaths from other causes increased," he reported.

Other Sources: The Lancet