Rectal cancer patients who 'watch and wait' may only need few years of stringent follow-up

An international team of scientists, including doctors from the Champalimaud Clinical Centre, in Lisbon, has just published results in the prestigious journal The Lancet Oncology that suggest that the majority of rectal cancer patients may be able, in the not so distant future, to replace aggressive colorectal surgery with a course of radiochemotherapy and few years of close surveillance. All this with a very low probability of seeing their tumor regrow locally or leading to the development of distant metastases later on if they survived the first years after treatment without signs of reappearance of the tumor.