Colon cancer: surgical therapy.

Successful treatment of colon cancer is founded on surgical resection of the primary lesion and the regional lymph nodes. The significant number of patients so resected who experience no recurrence, even with positive lymph nodes, indicates that the disease still was confined regionally and that the therapy was effective. Cancer in about 50 per cent of patients does recur, however, and, outside of a small proportion who can be resected again, all patients with recurrence die. There is virtually no curative nonsurgical therapy for colorectal carcinoma.