Most patients with stage II colon cancer will be fine after surgery, with little risk that their cancer will come back.
But one in five will have cancer spread beyond their colon.
Better information about which patients will relapse could spare many from the risks of chemotherapy.
A new gene test announced at the 2011 Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium in San Francisco helps provide answers to which patients are at highest risk and could help patients and their doctors make better decisions about follow-up chemotherapy after surgery.
ColoPrint, an 18 gene tumor tissue signature, found that three out of four patients with stage II colon cancer had only about a 5 percent risk of recurrence, very similar to stage I patients. For the remaining high risk patients, one in five (20 percent) had cancer return.



