CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Vol 11, 82-87, Copyright
© 1961 by American Cancer Society
A Plea for Improvement of the Results of Bowel Cancer Therapy
Victor A. Gilbertsen M.D.1
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, and Director, Cancer Detection Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The opportunity would appear to exist to double or triple the survival rate for patients with cancer of the bowel—even without revising basic operative procedures and without having to do more radical primary surgery. Accomplishment of this goal, however, necessitates that patients and physicians alike be educated to the early symptoms of cancer of the bowel and that treatment be employed before lesions become further advanced.
More ideal, of course, would be the detection of asymptomatic cancer by routine periodic examination. Potentially, the magnitude of improvement in over-all survival rates would appear to be phenomenal. Reliable evidence exists, for example, that annual proctoscopic examination (followed by removal of any adenomatous polyps found) could almost completely prevent the development of all but the earliest, most favorably treated rectal malignancies and reduce the over-all "failure rate" (presently 70-80%) to 1/10-1/20 of the present figure.
This, then, is a plea for a realistic recognition: that the current results of treatment of cancer of the bowel are poor; that the usual patient is not salvaged, because operations usually employed are effective for "early" lesions rather than "average" lesions; and that treatment of patients, while they yet have either no symptoms or symptoms of short duration, likely will allow many of those patients to be salvaged who are now seemingly destined to die because of ignorance.
