Bowel Surgery
The most common and the most dreaded disease is colon cancer. It is also the leading cause of death due to cancer. Which brings up the need to deal with this at the earliest chance possible. The best treatment available today is bowel surgery. It provides permanent relief from this deadly disease if caught in time.
Bowel surgery has one focus, and that is to get rid of the colon cancer, to remove the part of the colon that is infected with cancerous cells. Another name for this procedure is referred as a colon resection.
Before you can have surgery, you will be put through a series of tests to determine the exact location of the cancer, as well as the dimensions in the colon. Bowel surgery can take around 2 to 4 hours and you are given anesthesia during the entire time.
There are several methods of bowel surgery that are used, some of the most common are:
Colonscopic excision - this is performed with a medical instrument called a Colonoscope. It was previously used to detect colon cancer but medical advancements have widened the role of a Colonoscopy. With a colonoscopy, small polyps and/or cancerous adenomas can be removed.
Bowel resection - this type of bowel surgery is done through an opening in the abdomen. This opening is where they remove the infected cells and clean the surrounding areas of any impurities. Then the ends of the bowel are joined through anastomosis. If the patient suffers from rectal cancer, they are also provided with a temporary colostomy separate from the bowel resection.
In about 12 weeks, you will be given more tests to see if the colostomy opening can be closed returning your bowel back to normal. They will create an opening on the side of the abdomen called a soma. The stoma will provide a way for waste material go from the intestines to a colostomy bag.
Abdominoperineal excision - this type of bowel surgery is only done if the case is critical. When the other methods have failed to remove the cancer, then the entire rectum and the anal canal are removed. This is not a method that people normally resort to as their are other methods that work to cure colon cancer. |