Stage 3 Colon Cancer: Half the Chemo May Be Enough for Many Patients
For years, six months of chemotherapy after surgery was the default for stage 3 colon cancer. That's changing. Large pooled trials now show that for a significant portion of patients, three months of treatment delivers similar survival with far less long-term nerve damage. The difference comes down to your specific tumor characteristics, and increasingly, to biomarkers that didn't exist in routine practice a few years ago. Stage 3 means the cancer has reached nearby lymph nodes but hasn't spread to distant organs. Surgery removes the tumor and affected lymph nodes, and then "adjuvant" chemotherapy (treatment given after surgery) works to eliminate any microscopic cancer cells left behind. The real question isn't whether to do chemo. It's how much you actually need.