[Local therapy of rectal cancer]

Curative local excision or segmental resection can be performed in 10-15% of patients with rectal carcinoma, avoiding colostomy. Local treatment of early, microinvasive carcinoma is the procedure of choice. The most important problem is patient selection. With the endosonographic assessment of the tumor invasion, preoperative staging is possible with high accuracy. In a small series 10 patients were found to be tumor-free 4-46 months after local treatment.