Table 1.

Role of surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy in early stage colon cancer (American Joint Committee on cancer stages I to III)

	Stage I	Stage II	Stage III
Definition	The tumor has grown through the colonic mucosa and has invaded the muscular layer of the colon	The tumor has grown through the wall of the colon or invaded adjacent organ, but has not involved the regional lymph nodes	The tumor has spread to the regional lymph nodes, but not to the distant organs
Contribution of surgery	5-yr DFS rate of 95% with surgery alone[6]	5-yr DFS rate of 82% to 88% with surgery alone[6,14]	5-yr DFS rate of 45%-50% with surgery alone[14,15]
Contribution of adjuvant chemotherapy	Adjuvant chemotherapy not recommended	Only offered to “high-risk” group-magnitude of benefit is uncertain	Recommended for all patients. Absolute improvement of 5-yr DFS rate is about 20% because of adjuvant chemotherapy[5,16,17]

DFS: Disease free survival.