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James Gamero, MD
Mount Carmel Mercy Hospital Detroit

JAMA. 1976;236(20):2284.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

This is in reference to the recent editorial by Drs Mavligit and Freireich entitled "Progress in the Treatment of Colorectal Cancer" (235:2855, 1976).

I believe that their statement "treatment results have not improved much over the past two decades, in spite of surgery and radiotherapy" is incorrect and misleading. I agree that surgery has perhaps gone as far as it will and that no progress with this therapeutic modality has been made in the past 20 years. Much to the contrary, radiotherapy has increasingly improved results, and reports published within the last two decades clearly demonstrate this (231:1381, 1975; 231:1385, 1975).^1-3 In fact, the contributions of radiotherapy have been such that one can speak of cure by endocavitary irradiation in certain early tumors. It is very probable that radiotherapy is under-utilized nationwide, but that is a different problem.

These comments are not to denigrate fluorouracil, which . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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