Handbook of Gastrointestinal Cancers

The purpose of this handbook is to create a practical guide for trainees, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and attending physicians to guide them in the treatment of patients with gastrointestinal cancers. The handbook provides key information on diagnosis and treatment, while highlighting the epidemiology, molecular data, and additionally various multimodality treatment options for a broad array of gastrointestinal cancers. It is concise and easy to read, yet broad and practical in its ability to provide for the needs of the medical professional dealing with gastrointestinal cancers. Unique to the book are “How I Treat” vignettes providing not only standards of care but expert recommendations for approaching tough-to-treat disease sites and, in some cases, rare or uncommon patient scenarios. The book is appropriate for physicians in all specialties as well as primary care physicians and other healthcare professionals who are essential members of any team caring for the patient with gastrointestinal cancer. It begins with the most common of the gastrointestinal cancers, colon and rectal cancer, followed by pancreatic, hepatocellular, esophageal, and gastric cancer, cancer of the bile ducts and gallbladder, and then the more rare and unusual cancers such as gastrointestinal stromal tumors, neuroendocrine tumors, and anal carcinoma. In each of these sections, the authors use evidence-based guidelines for the specific cancer to focus on epidemiology and biologic aspects of the disease, including genetic factors and molecular biology. Chapters also discuss modifiable factors, diagnostic testing, and techniques consisting of the molecular basis of diagnosis and treatment of early and advanced disease, which incorporates the role of surgery, neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and biologics and their selection and ablative techniques. The presentation is very helpful and unique in that the authors approach advanced disease as oligometastatic and widely metastatic and account for how these approaches differ.