Colon cancer can be a disease easy to treat if the diagnosis is made in the earliest stages. However, in this case treatment means a surgical intervention. There is no colon cancer medicine that can cure the disease, mo matter when the detection is made.

If colon cancer is diagnosed in the last stages, and mostly after the disease has spread, the surgery can not be performed or if it is, it can not remove all the cancer tumors. In this phase chemotherapy or radiation therapy is needed. Chemotherapy is the use of medications and drugs to stop the cancer spread or to decrease its effects. Often the drugs are given through a needle in the vein, and the blood vessels carry the drugs through the whole body. Sometimes the drugs are available as pills and sometimes they are given through a shot, or injection. It depends on the cancer evolution and the patients’ general health.



Colon cancer medications are usually made as a combination of many drugs. They have also some side effects, which can be in general controlled through other medications. However, some of the drugs side effects are felt by colon cancer patients all their life. The hair loss is one of the most common chemotherapy side effects, but this one is felt no more after the treatment ends. Nausea and vomiting are other common side effects that are felt by many patients because of the high number of drugs administrated.

Some colon cancer medications used for many patients are fluorouracil usually combined with leucovorin, or with leucovorin and oxaliplatin, and capecitabine combined with irinotecan or oxaliplatin. Leucovorin is a vitamin complex used to treat advanced colon cancer. By itself, Leucovorin isn't able to fight cancer at all that is way it is combined with other drugs. Leucovorin helps patients by increasing the effectiveness of fluorouracil. Usually these medications’ side effects are not very bad, that is way most doctors decide to use them on their patients.



Adrucil is another chemotherapy drug that interferes with the growth of cancer cells. It can be used to treat colon cancer, but is has side effects also. Eloxatin is also a chemotherapy drug that kills cancer cells. It's used to treat colorectal cancer and can be administered alone or with other colon cancer medications.

All the colon cancer medications that can be administrated on patients can have some side effects because they are very powerful. This is the reason way they have to be administrated under specific medical control, and when harmful side effects occur, doctors can interfere and stop the use of the drugs, or they can administrate other medications to decrease the side effects. However, the way drugs work can be different form a colon cancer patient to another.