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Dr. Andrew Rynne
MD
Dr. Andrew Rynne

Family Physician

Exp 50 years

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Suggest Treatment For Liver Mets Due To Cancerous Rectal Polyp

My Mother had a colonoscopy in June 2012 (70 years old, in good health, up on her health screenings - has had 5 colonoscopies) anyway in December 2012 she developed some rectal bleeding and went back in and asked him to check it out. He did a sigmoid and said he missed a rectal polyp on the original colonoscopy that was cancerous. He said it was small and it would have to come out right away - we went to a colo-rectal surgeon (chief of colo-rectal surgery at UPMC Presbyterian) and he said it was a stage 3 rectal cancer that was curable. 2 weeks later they ran a pet scan and saw some liver mets. My Mom had 17 chemo treatments, radiation, surgery and had a bad outcome. What could we have done to save her?
posted on Sat, 10 May 2014
Twitter Fri, 24 Oct 2014 Answered on
Twitter Fri, 24 Oct 2014 Last reviewed on
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Oncologist,  's  Response
since your mother had liver metastasis it was stage 4 but not stage 3 disease. For stage 4 disease average survival is around one to two years in-spite of treatment.
The only unfortunate think is that her polyp was missed on colonoscopy. Had it been detected earlier, she might have had a better outcome since it would be in early stage. But missing polyps on scopy is very rare and I feel it was not present at that time and the disease itself must have presented in advanced stage. Remember some cancers are very aggressive because of their biology and progress very rapidly.
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Suggest Treatment For Liver Mets Due To Cancerous Rectal Polyp

since your mother had liver metastasis it was stage 4 but not stage 3 disease. For stage 4 disease average survival is around one to two years in-spite of treatment. The only unfortunate think is that her polyp was missed on colonoscopy. Had it been detected earlier, she might have had a better outcome since it would be in early stage. But missing polyps on scopy is very rare and I feel it was not present at that time and the disease itself must have presented in advanced stage. Remember some cancers are very aggressive because of their biology and progress very rapidly.