Cummings B J
Department of Radiation Oncology, Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Surg Clin North Am. 1993 Feb;73(1):167-81. doi: 10.1016/s0039-6109(16)45935-9.
The role of radiation therapy in the management of colorectal cancer has become more clearly defined as the number of clinical studies has grown. It is now evident that radiation is capable of sterilizing subclinical deposits of cancer at doses tolerable by adjacent normal tissues, and to a lesser extent, these doses can control more bulky cancers. The integration of radiation and chemotherapy has already led to some improvement in survival rates in the adjuvant treatment of rectal cancer. The further development of such combinations seems likely to improve tumor control and survival rates in many stages of cancer. In the next decade, it is also likely that there will be refinement of the use of radiation through better understanding of the biology of colorectal cancer, perhaps supplemented by the development of predictive assays that can guide both the selection of patients for treatment and the choice of the most effective radiation schedule.
随着临床研究数量的增加，放射治疗在结直肠癌治疗中的作用已变得更加明确。现在很明显，放射能够在邻近正常组织可耐受的剂量下使亚临床癌灶失活，并且在较小程度上，这些剂量可以控制体积更大的癌症。放疗与化疗的联合已经在直肠癌辅助治疗中使生存率有了一定提高。这种联合治疗的进一步发展似乎有可能在癌症的许多阶段提高肿瘤控制率和生存率。在未来十年，通过对结直肠癌生物学的更好理解，放射治疗的应用可能会更加精细，也许还会开发出预测性检测方法，以指导患者的治疗选择和最有效的放疗方案的选择。
