Digestive Tract Cancers

If surgery is part of your treatment plan, it’s reassuring to know that your health is in the hands of specialized oncology surgeons. As a recognized leader in digestive cancer care, we’re helping patients heal through innovative surgical care day in and day out.

Options for Surgery

Gastrointestinal cancer surgery can be a promising step forward on your path to healing. Your dedicated team of gastrointestinal cancer specialists will review every detail of your medical history and recent tests to recommend the most effective treatment plan for you. Surgery may be the only treatment you need, or, more commonly, it’s used in combination with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.

We treat a broad range of digestive tract tumors with the most minimally-invasive procedures possible. Depending on your type of cancer and stage, that could include:

• Robotic surgery uses smaller incisions for colon or rectal cancer operations, meaning shorter recovery times.
• Transanal minimally-invasive surgery is a new, highly effective treatment to remove rectal tumors, pioneered by the skilled surgeons at our hospital.
• Tumor and partial colon or rectum removal is used to treat colorectal cancer. Depending on your case, your surgeon may take out more of the colon or rectum.
• Pancreatic and liver tumors, both benign and malignant, are often treated with minimally-invasive techniques.

Whatever procedure is part of your treatment plan, trust in a team ready to guide you from pre-op to post-op and beyond.

Radiation Therapy: What to Expect

While radiation therapy is one of the most common treatments for gastrointestinal cancer, at AdventHealth Cancer Institute, we do it with uncommon expertise, guidance, and compassion. Using sophisticated radiation technology, we can target tumors including rectal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, and pancreatic cancer with amazing precision, easing your pain and leaving healthy tissue untouched. Depending on your diagnosis, your dedicated team may recommend radiation alone, but in many cases, we combine it with surgery, chemotherapy, and sometimes other treatment options.

How Does Radiation Therapy Work?

Our oncology experts take an individualized approach to every patient’s treatment plan. Radiation therapy targets specific areas of the body, shrinking tumors and killing cancer cells by damaging their DNA.

When treating digestive tract cancer, radiation therapy is usually delivered one of three ways:

• External radiation, which delivers radiation in a concentrated beam to keep nearby healthy tissue unaffected, often using imaging to guide the treatment.
• Internal radiation delivers concentrated doses of radiation guided by ultrasound, keeping healthy nearby tissue safer.
• Systemic radiation is a treatment that is swallowed or injected and then travels through your bloodstream to target and shrink cancer cells.

Throughout your treatment, your nurses and your radiology care team are there to keep you and your support system informed, comfortable, and uplifted.

Nothing matters more to us than getting you well, and getting you home. Depending on what type of gastrointestinal cancer you have and the level of advancement, chemotherapy may play an essential role in successfully treating your cancer, including colon cancer, rectal cancer, liver cancer, and pancreatic cancer. From the moment you arrive for your chemo treatment, one of our nurses will be there to greet you and guide you.

How Does Chemotherapy Work?

Using a combination of specialized drugs, chemotherapy has the power to destroy or slow down the growth of fast-growing cancer cells, wherever they are. More often than not for gastrointestinal cancer, chemo is administered intravenously, but it can also be delivered by injection or orally. At AdventHealth Cancer Institute, our oncology experts take an individualized approach to your chemotherapy treatment. Chemotherapy can be used three different ways to help treat gastrointestinal cancer:

• Neoadjuvant treatment, during which chemo is administered before surgery to shrink the tumor, making it easier to remove and helping prevent the cancer cells from coming back.
• Adjuvant treatment, during which chemo is administered after surgery to help remove any cancer that may be left. Often, you may receive a combination of chemo and radiation therapy after surgery, called chemoradiation.
• Chemotherapy can also be used as your primary treatment option if surgery and/or radiation therapy aren’t the right course of treatment for you.

Depending on your type of cancer, we’ll determine which treatment(s) is best for you.

Our Gastrointestinal Cancer Program offers an optimized care track for patients with early onset colorectal cancer. The early onset group includes patients who have been diagnosed at age 50 or under, and as a result, often require a unique approach to treatment. As the rate of diagnoses of colorectal cancer in younger populations continues to rise, we’re taking a proactive approach to help patients reach the best possible outcome. Our multidisciplinary team of GI oncology experts works with these patients to develop individualized care plans, keeping age, lifestyle, overall health and other factors top of mind. Backed by a highly specialized team, support resources and wellness programs, we’re here to help get you back to what matters most.