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Dr. Kenneth Offit with Research Study Assistant Emily Glogowski
Dr. Kenneth Offit with Research Study Assistant Emily Glogowski

At Memorial Sloan-Kettering, a team of more than 20 specialists work together in a multidisciplinary team to provide the best possible clinical care.

Eradicating Cancer, Preserving Function

We offer the most advanced treatment options not only to eradicate the disease but to preserve patients' ability to function normally. Our surgeons have developed new techniques that preserve bowel, bladder, and sexual function. These treatment advances have reduced the number of patients requiring a permanent colostomy after rectal surgery to only 10 percent.

Minimally Invasive Surgery

Some colorectal tumors can now be removed by minimally invasive methods. Advances in laparoscopic technology and fiber optics allow surgeons to perform complex procedures through small incisions. One such method, transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEM), allows surgeons to remove certain tumors from the rectum using smaller incisions than standard open surgery.

Sparing Healthy Tissue

Our doctors are leaders in the development and use of preoperative treatment regimens as part of a concerted, overall programmatic effort towards sphincter preservation rather than the use of permanent colostomies. For selected patients whose rectal cancer has recurred in the pelvis, we also offer intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT), which allows for high doses of radiation therapy to be delivered directly to the tumor during surgery while sparing surrounding healthy tissues.

Reconstruction for Quality of Life

Memorial Sloan-Kettering surgeons pioneered a reconstruction technique that builds a new rectum from a portion of the colon. This and other methods of rectal reconstruction are now combined with techniques to preserve nerves vital to sexual functioning. In men with rectal cancer, our potency preservation rates are very high.

Clinical Research

Our Team of Experts
Our Team of Experts
More than 20 specialists work together to provide the best possible care for each patient

In chemotherapy, Memorial Sloan-Kettering research helped establish the efficacy of irinotecan, the first new drug for colorectal cancer in 40 years. In some patients, this drug shrinks metastatic tumors when other treatment fails.

Our researchers led an international trial demonstrating that irinotecan in combination with fluorouracil and leucovorin was a more effective first-line therapy for advanced colorectal cancer, and they are now leading a large study to evaluate the combination's effectiveness in earlier-stage colorectal cancer. Oxaliplatin is another new drug in the treatment of colorectal cancer available in a clinical research program.

New Technologies for Advanced Cancers

Patients whose disease has spread to the liver benefit from a comprehensive program that includes doctors from colorectal surgery, hepatobiliary surgery, and medical oncology who work together to maximize long-term survival.

Intrahepatic Pump

Chemotherapy delivered directly to the liver can shrink tumors more effectively than that given through a vein in the arm. Memorial Sloan-Kettering has an active program developing new technologies to deliver chemotherapy through a pump placed directly into the hepatic artery, which leads to the liver. To learn more, please visit our clinical trial database.


Last Updated: Jan. 8, 2004
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