[Adjuvant treatment of colonic cancers]

In the last decade, adjuvant chemotherapy has led to significant improvement in survival for large bowel cancer patients. The association of 5-FU plus levamisole was the first described and demonstrated its efficacy in stage Dukes C (T1,2,3,4 N1 M0) completely-resected adenocarcinoma. Recently, chemotherapy with 5-FU and folinic acid was recommended on the basis of randomized trials. Advances in adjuvant chemotherapy may result in increasing 5-FU doses as described in metastatic colorectal carcinomas, and in use of new drugs such as oxaliplatin or raltitrexed, whose activity has been well-studied in Dukes D (M1) carcinomas. Immunotherapy, intraperitoneal and intraportal infusion of chemotherapy are promising approaches but still in evaluation. The main difficulty for the future is to define the best therapeutic regimen in order to reach the highest improvement in survival.