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A recent Cancer Research UK-funded clinical trial has revealed that administering chemotherapy before surgery can significantly reduce the risk of colon cancer recurrence. The FOxTROT trial was conducted by scientists from the University of Birmingham and the University of Leeds and involved 1,053 colon cancer patients from 85 hospitals across the UK, Denmark, and Sweden. The trial demonstrated that providing six weeks of chemotherapy before surgery can reduce the risk of the disease returning within two years by 28%.
The FOxTROT trial’s findings suggest that administering chemotherapy before surgery is a cost-effective way of treating colon cancer and could potentially save many lives worldwide. The treatment could be easily adopted by healthcare systems globally, benefiting at least 5,000 colon cancer patients in the UK and hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide every year.
The trial’s co-leader, Professor Dion Morton, stated that “This treatment could be used on the widest possible group of patients. Thanks to funding from Cancer Research UK, doctors in countries around the world will now be able to put these findings into clinical practice, saving many thousands of lives.” Delivering chemotherapy before surgery is a simple yet effective way of preventing cancer recurrence and could potentially transform cancer care worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where cancer treatments are often prohibitively expensive.
These findings suggest that delivering chemotherapy before surgery is an effective way of treating colon cancer, and that this treatment could be easily adopted by healthcare systems worldwide. The FOxTROT trial’s results could transform cancer care globally, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, potentially saving thousands of lives every year.
