[Treatment of colorectal cancer: a resolute multidisciplinary approach]

Significant developments have been occurred in the field of colorectal cancer treatments over these last years, surgery clearly remaining the only curative therapy. Optimalized surgical approaches, such as total mesorectum excision, aggressive resections of liver metastases and development of innovative techniques of local destruction of hepatic lesions using radiofrequency attempt to prolong survival. New chemotherapeutic and biological agents, associated with a better knowledge of tumor biology open promising perspectives with regards to an increasing of survival, an improvement of quality of life and the possibility to resect curatively liver metastases initially unresectable, after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The present paper aims to review the therapeutic approaches at the different stages of the disease and strongly insists on the multidisciplinary strategy required for an optimal management and a global view of colorectal cancer, shared by the surgeon, the gastroenterologist and/or the oncologist and the radiotherapist.