Quality of Life After Multidisciplinary Management of Rectal Cancer

The goals of rectal cancer treatment include optimal local control, maximal overall survival, as well as the best preservation of pre-therapy function and well-being of the patient. As illustrated in the remainder of this textbook, significant efforts have been devoted to developing surgical and multimodality regimens to achieve these goals. Stage-specific treatments include surgery alone (local excision or radical resection) for early-stage rectal cancer (American Joint Commission on Cancer [AJCC] stage I) and multimodality therapy with radical surgery, chemotherapy, and/or pelvic radiation for locally advanced (AJCC stages II and III) and metastatic (AJCC stage IV) rectal cancer. With this current multimodality strategy, the overall 5-year survival for locally advanced rectal cancer is 65–75%, with local recurrence rates in the range of 5–10% [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].