The management of locally advanced rectal cancer was done by surgery followed by radiotherapy and/or 5-fluorouracil chemotherapy. Anterior resection with sphincter-sparing was devised for removal malignant disease on the upper third of rectum and abdominoperineal resection was done for cancer of middle or distal rectum. However, rectal cancer has prominent tendency to recur locally which is often catastrophic - it is a very symptomatic and debilitating disease. On rectal cancer, this is the major threats for patients afflicted, in such a way that the prevention of local recurrence is one of the main goals of rectal cancer surgery. This has been possible with advances that it was brought because of surgical techniques improvement by total mesorectal excision (TME), because of wide variety of oncological drugs, because of role of endoscopic ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging in the evaluation of rectal cancer, and the acquired knowledge on preoperative chemoradiation as a neoadjuvant therapy.
Rectal cancer; total mesorectal excision (TME); neoadjuvant therapy