For patients with advanced rectal cancers, surgery that includes total mesorectal excision (TME) often provides the best possible patient outcomes and survival.

The mesorectum is a fatty tissue directly adjacent to the rectum that contains blood vessels and lymph nodes. When rectal cancers recur, it is often in these lymph nodes. In a TME surgery, surgeons carefully remove the entire mesorectum and lymph nodes, leading to a very low risk that cancer will recur in the local region.

TME surgery sometimes impairs rectum function and results in patients needing a permanent colostomy. Although the risk is never eliminated, having your surgery performed by an experienced physician such as those at the Integrative Surgery Center can make this outcome less likely.