Surgeons at the Colorectal Center at the USC/Norris Cancer Hospital focus on matching the extent of surgery with the extent of disease, avoiding, whenever possible, colostomies and ileostomies. Their goal is to achieve wide margins around tumors and to achieve the best result while preserving, whenever possible, the patient’s quality of life.

Colorectal Center surgeons are particularly interested in treating locally recurrent rectal cancer. As such, one procedure, called brachytherapy, has been developed as an advanced treatment in which radioactive “seeds” are placed directly at the site of the cancer, giving a high dose (as opposed to more generalized external radiation). However, since neither surgery, chemotherapy nor radiation is usually effective alone, the center takes a multimodality approach that may involve surgery and/or chemotherapy.