Will I Need a Colostomy Bag After Colon Cancer Surgery?

Dr. Mark Gimbel talks about when a colostomy bag is used after colon cancer surgery.

Let’s be honest, most people are not very happy with the idea of carrying around a colostomy bag after a surgical procedure. That’s putting it lightly. However, many colon cancer patients assume that a colostomy bag will be part of the process if surgery is involved. But this is often not the case, especially for earlier stage colon cancer patients.

For more on when a colostomy bag is used after colon cancer surgery, watch Dr. Mark Gimbel in the video below:

Mark Gimbel MD:  The one interesting thing about colon cancer is typically a colostomy bag is not required.  Stage II and stage III colon cancer patients are not usually obstructed, their tumors come out easily and it is easy to put them back together.  A lot of patients see me with the fear if they are going to need a bag and how am I going to deal with this for the rest of my life.  In the very rare chance that I do have to use a bag, I can always tell them that this is temporary and in six to eight weeks, we can go back and reverse it.  So, the biggest fear of having a colostomy is usually way blown out of proportion.

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Mark Gimbel

Dr.Gimbel graduated from the University of Maryland, and then had an internship at the University of Florida, Jacksonville and residencies at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He spent two years doing a surgical residency fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center New York and completed a surgical oncology fellowship at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla.

Latest posts by Mark Gimbel (see all)

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