Is Colon Cancer Curable?

Dr. Mark Gimbel explains instances when colon cancer can be curable.

colon cancerAfter a diagnosis, many people want to know, is colon cancer curable? While a 100% cure to all colon cancers has not been developed, in many instances if a colon cancer is caught early enough in its development it can be cured. The key is early detection, which is why being screened at age 50 or before is so important. The earlier doctors are able to find the disease, the greater the chance the colon cancer can be treated effectively.

For more on instances when colon cancer can be curable, watch Dr. Mark Gimbel in the video below:

Mark Gimbel MD:  Is there cure for colon cancer, that’s the $100,000 question and the answer is yes.  There is a cure for colon cancer.  Obviously, the earlier the colon cancer is identified, the more likely you are to have a cure.  So, if a colon cancer could be taken out, it’s confined to the colon, the chances of cure actually quite high.  In fact, if the colon cancer is pretty early and there is not even a reason to give chemotherapy in the post-treatment setting.  If the colon cancer is a little more advanced and you can still take it out or chemotherapy can prevent it from coming back and you can still have cure from the colon cancer and there is a big misconception that once the colon cancer has spread that you cannot be cured and that’s actually not true.  There are some select incidences where even if the colon cancer has spread to the liver that if you have small volume disease in the liver and it can actually be removed, then a cure still able to be achieved, so you have been able to increase the cure for more patients than we have in the past with newer drugs and newer treatments.

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.


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