Your doctor may sometimes recommend that you undergo chemotherapy before you have surgery for your colon tumor. This is called neoadjuvant chemotherapy. It’s sometimes given if the tumor is very large or if there is metastatic disease outside of the colon. The ultimate goal of chemotherapy in both cases is to decrease the amount of cancer in the body to allow for all remaining tumor(s) to be removed through an operation.
If there is metastatic disease outside of the colon, then neoadjuvant therapy can target the cancer throughout the body. If there is a good response, then surgery may be recommended for both the primary tumor in the colon and the metastases.
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