Colon cancer has five different stages of evolution that show how far has the disease spread to other parts of the body. In most cancer related disease, the cure is easier if the disease is diagnosed in the earliest stages. Stage 3 is also divided in stage 3A, stage 3B and stage 3C. Stage 3A is the least advanced one and stage 3C the most advanced colon cancer stage.

Usually the colon cancer is formed in the layer of the colon, and then it can evolve through a thin muscle layer, to the submucosa. After that, the outermost layer of the colon can be affected. If a blood vessel or a lymph node is infiltrated by the cancer, they will help the disease spread faster. When colon cancer is discovered in stage 3A, it has reached the middle layers of the colon and spread to as many as three nearby lymph nodes. In stage 3B, the disease is spread to many lymph nodes and is has also spread beyond the middle layers of the colon, or it has reached to three nearby tissues or it has spread through the colon wall and it has affected nearby organs and to the peritoneum, the tissue that covers most of the organs in the abdomen. In colon cancer stage 3C, the disease affects four or more nearby lymph nodes.



In general for colon cancer stage 3 the treatment involves a surgical intervention and also chemotherapy. Through surgery the part of the colon that was affected by cancer is removed, and the healthy part is reattached back. Chemotherapy drugs and period of administration depends on the type of the particular characteristics of the patient health and the way his body responds to the medicines.

Colon cancer stage 3 survival rates can be influenced by many factors. The exact location of the tumor is one of them. If the tumor is located on the right side of the colon, symptoms will need more time to appear than if the tumor was on the left side of the colon, and so the disease will be diagnosed later.



Colon cancer stage 3 survival rates are not very encouraging. If in stage 3A, 83 percent of colon cancer patients are still alive five years after their diagnosis, in stage 3B only 64 percent survive and in stage 3C about 44 percent. To be able to compare this statistics with the other colon cancer stages is important to know that the survival rates for colon cancer stage 1 are about 80 to 95 percent, stage 2, 55 to 80 percent and in colon cancer stage 4, the most serious type, survival rates are about 10 percent from all colon cancer patients diagnosed in this stage.