My son has terminal bowel cancer. He has a perforation and has an infection. This is being treated with Iv antibiotics. There is no chance of surgery. Is this course of treatment likely to work? If antibiotics don t work is there any further course of action to be taken.
If there is a perforation of the bowel through the cancer your son is suffering from, then it is unlikely to heal with antibiotics alone. The treatment is only surgical repair of the perforation. I hope there is a very strong reason for not operating upon him, since the situation is life-threatening in the absence of surgery. The infection also will continue to spread as long as the perforation persists. A remote possibility is that the perforation seals on its own and then the antibiotics take care of the infection, but that scenario is very rare.