A recent study by James Fleshman, a colon and rectal surgery specialist at the School of Medicine, showed that minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery to remove colon cancer allows patients to heal faster and experience less pain. While reaping these benefits of the procedure, patients in the study experienced outcomes similar to patients opting for traditional surgery methods.
KSDK reporter Kay Quinn takes a deeper look into the procedure in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.
Simpler cancer surgery passes the test
(Republished with permission from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This article originally ran in the Health & Fitness section on Monday, July 26, 2004)
By Kay Quinn
There’s an exciting advance in surgery for patients diagnosed with colon cancer. It’s the result of a 10-year clinical study done by doctors at Washington University School of Medicine.
Not every surgeon is doing the procedure, and not every patient is a candidate. But Dr. James Fleshman, a colon and rectal surgery specialist at Washington University, believes minimally invasive surgery to remove cancer of the colon will become the standard of care in the future.
The history of what the medical community calls laparoscopically assisted colectomy is a long one, often marked by poor results.
In 1990, this less invasive version of colon surgery was first seriously considered for colon cancer patients. Medical experts now recall that surgeons with little experience or no training were performing the cancer surgery this way. Patients had problems with the incisions and with their tumors, and they had a higher than acceptable rate of cancer recurrence.
As a result, a moratorium was placed on laparoscopic surgery for colon cancer in 1994, although surgeons continued to perform the less invasive operation for benign diseases such as diverticulitis and inflammatory bowel disease.
But during the past 10 years, surgeons at 48 medical centers throughout the country, including Washington University, continued to perform the laparoscopic procedure under the strict supervision of a clinical trial.
Some 872 patients with colon cancer were put into two groups. One group had the standard “open” operation that requires an 8-inch incision. The second group had the minimally invasive technique, which uses a tiny camera, small surgical instruments and several small incisions to remove the cancerous section of colon, usually 12 to 18 inches in length. Patients were then followed for more than four years.
The study proved that three years after surgery, the cancer recurrence rate was similar in the two groups: 18 percent for those who had the standard operation and 16 percent for those who had the less invasive operation. The overall survival rate was also very similar.
But Fleshman cites a compelling difference between the two groups: Patients who had the less invasive operation recovered in two weeks instead of six. They needed little or no pain medication and required shorter hospital stays.
While the study represents an advance in the treatment and care of these cancer patients, Fleshman uses it as a reminder that colon cancer is a largely avoidable diagnosis. Colorectal cancer screening can catch tumors in their early stages, and polyps before they become cancerous. The American Cancer Society recommends that people have a colonoscopy every 10 years, beginning at age 50.
Kay Quinn is an anchor and health beat reporter for KSDK (Channel 5).
Copyright 2004 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.