The consultant who pioneered Papillon, Prof Sun Myint from The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Merseyside, said: “It is wonderful that patients will now be given a choice of treatment and many of them will have a much better quality of life later because of it.”
His trials followed patients for five years and he found Papillon helped preserve organs 93% of the time in cases of rectal cancer where tumours measured 3cm or less.
Prof Myint, who is 77 and still working as a consultant, said he was ready to retire once the treatment became “embedded as the standard of care in the NHS and across the world”.
Colorectal cancer includes cancers of the rectum, bowel and colon and is the fourth most common cancer in the UK.