Colon cancer · Guide
Colon cancer explorer: guide
Show the bowel within the body, enter the tumour’s place, length and depth from the report, explain the operation and share a matching picture sheet.
For patients and families
Look at the picture together
The picture opens with the whole body. Choose Abdomen to see the large bowel (colon) with the small bowel, stomach and liver, then Tumour to move close. Drag to turn it and scroll or pinch to zoom.
The colon starts low on your right side at the caecum, runs up your right side, crosses under your ribs, runs down your left side and joins the rectum through the S-shaped sigmoid colon.
Show what your team has found
Your clinician can enter which part of the colon the tumour is in, its length, how far round the bowel it reaches and how deep it has grown (the T stage) from your report. The purple tumour changes with those settings. The tumour view cuts the bowel open lengthways so you can see the layers of the wall. The shape is schematic, not a copy of your scan.
Things you could ask
“Can you show me where it is, using my report?”
“How deep has it grown, and what does that mean for me?”
“Which part of the bowel would the operation remove, and how is it joined afterwards?”
“Might I need a stoma, even for a short time?”
Take it home
Ask for a picture sheet with the views you discussed, your team’s explanation, questions to ask and where to find help. A QR code reopens the same model settings on your phone. Names, notes and contact details are never included in that code or saved online.
For clinicians
Start with orientation
The explorer uses the shared body, renderer, labels, pelvic frame and digestive tract from the rectal explorer. The colon follows the same route as the colon shown in the rectal and prostate explorers. It opens at normal anatomy with no tumour or operation. Whole body, Abdomen and Tumour change the camera in one continuous scene.
Set up from the report
| Control | What to set |
|---|---|
| Tumour on the model | Add one tumour in the colon. Changing a tumour setting also adds it and opens the lengthways cut-away, as in the rectal explorer. |
| Part of the colon | Caecum, ascending colon, hepatic flexure, transverse colon, splenic flexure, descending colon or sigmoid colon, as written in the CT, colonoscopy or pathology report. The part sets the patient’s side. |
| Position along that part | 0–100 %, from the end nearer the caecum to the end nearer the rectum, for descriptions such as “proximal sigmoid”. A tumour longer than its part is centred and reaches into the next part, and the summary says so. |
| Length of tumour | 5–150 mm along the bowel, with matching numeric input and slider. It sets the drawn tumour’s length and the measurement label. |
| How far round the bowel | 1–12 twelfths of the circumference; 12 is annular. The tumour is drawn on the front of the bowel; which side of the lumen it is on is schematic. |
| T stage | T1 to T4b as written by the team. It sets how far the drawn tumour reaches through the inner lining, muscle wall, the tissue around the bowel and the peritoneum. The model does not work out a stage. |
| Show / hide | Body outline, small bowel, stomach and liver, rectum and bladder, the cut-away, labels and measurements. |
Explain a selected plan
Right hemicolectomy, extended right hemicolectomy, left hemicolectomy and sigmoid colectomy colour the section usually removed teal. After the join shows the remaining ends joined, with a teal ring at the join. The team selects the plan. If the tumour as set is not wholly inside the section the picture removes, a notice asks the clinician to check the settings; it does not judge which operation is right. Lymph node and vessel removal, keyhole or robotic approaches, stomas and subtotal colectomy are not modelled; the stoma explorer shows stomas.
Picture sheet and QR code
Capture up to four views with Snapshot. Optional patient details, a nurse contact and a note stay on the device. Preview the A4 pages, then download PDF, print or save as a picture. The QR link stores validated model settings after # in the URL, with no names, notes or contact details. Changing any model setting clears older snapshots; changing only the camera lets you add another view.
Limits
- The model illustrates one tumour. It does not represent lymph nodes, spread to the liver or elsewhere, more than one tumour, obstruction or perforation.
- The colon’s route and length are an average adult’s; the tumour’s shape and the side of the bowel it is drawn on are approximate.
- The joins are schematic. In surgery the bowel is freed and brought together without tension, which the picture does not show.
Sources and review
Practising colorectal surgeon review is still needed for clinical teaching use. Please send corrections through feedback.