Big question. Colon surgeries nowadays are almost always performed as keyhole surgeries, so you get about 3-4 small incisions anywhere between 1 to 1.5cm on the abdomen. Usually accompanying that is another incision about 7 to 8cm which is much shorter than if you were to do a conventional operation. And through this we take out the colon -- the segment of the colon with cancer together with a margin, you can’t cut right beside the tumour, you need to leave a margin usually about 5cm on both ends of the tumour. We take that out and then join both ends of the colon back together.
In this day and age, we often use surgical staplers but there are circumstances where we still do handsewn anastomosis. That is how colon surgery is carried out.
