The treatment of cancer depends upon its stage. After patients get diagnosed with cancer, surgeons try to find out its severity. This is known as staging. Staging of cancer determines the spread of the cancerous polyps to other parts of the body and also their location.
Before deciding whether you need rectal cancer surgery, your surgeon will conduct various tests to examine how deeply the cancer cells have grown in the polyps and if it has developed metastasis.
In this article, we will discuss the different stages of rectal cancer in detail.
Four Stages Of Rectal Cancer
To find out the stage of the cancer the patient is suffering from, oncologists will carefully examine the medical history and ask about the symptoms. You will be recommended various diagnostic and imaging tests to look inside the rectum.
Some of the procedures which you will need to undergo are as follows:
- CT scan is done to detect the local recurrence, lymphadenopathy and distant metastasis of the rectal cancer.
- A pelvic ultrasound is performed to get images of the pelvic organs and diagnose problems like pain and bleeding.
- MRI to assess the location of the tumour
Now, let’s learn about each stage:
- Stage 0: Here the cancer cells have developed on the surface of tissue lining the rectum. It is the most common stage of rectal cancer. A polypectomy will be performed to remove the rectal polyps. No chemotherapy or radiation therapy is required.
- Stage 1: When the cancer has begun to spread in the deeper layers of the rectum, doctors refer to this as Stage 1. Here, the polyps are still confined to the rectal walls. The only possible treatment is complete removal of the cancer cells from the edges of the rectum.
- Stage 2: When the patient is in Stage 2, it means that the tumour has grown into the rectal wall and has also extended to the fat cells surrounding the rectum and its nearby tissues. Rectal cancer surgery in combination with other treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation is the most effective option.
- Stage 3: Here, the rectal cancers have spread to at least one lymph node and also some tissues outside the rectal wall. The oncology team plans the treatment plan based on the number of lymph nodes it has affected. Just like stage 2, the treatment options are surgery along with chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
- Stage 4: It is the most advanced stage of rectal cancer as the cancerous polyps have already spread to other organs like the liver, lungs and colon. Surgery alone will not show any progress at this stage. Multiple treatment options with a combination of therapies are necessary to control the cancer.
Wrapping Up
The survival chance of patients decreases with each stage as treatment becomes more difficult and costly. Hence, oncologists recommend early screening to detect cancer cells in the first place to have a successful treatment outcome.
