Session

Overview: Treatment for rectal cancer has evolved from a “single approach suits all” strategy to a multidisciplinary, tailor-made treatment with or without surgery. As such, radiotherapy can play a variety of roles in the rectal cancer journey, asking for personalized choices per patient. For example, in early stages, it may even be the only treatment modality followed by a watch and wait strategy or local excision. In the locally advanced setting it can be tailored to the specific patient's risk category and needs with intensification or personalization of RT dose and volumes, with or without the addition of systemic treatment. The approach for local recurrence requires a completely different mindset, depending on previous treatment and treatment aims, whereas in the oligometastatic patient it can offer a chance to a non-invasive disease control in synergy with systemic therapies. This shows that to ensure optimal treatment for every rectal cancer patient, a thorough understanding of all possibilities is needed. This symposium will provide you with an overview of the optimal treatment for these different disease stages.