“…However, several endoscopic alternatives to colostomy that do not involve surgery have been described for these cases, including bougienage, scope or balloon dilation, electrocoagulation, photodynamic therapy, laser photocoagulation, and stenting [2,14,18,[26][27][28]. Most of these methods are applicable only to distal rectal tumors, and each of them may need to be repeated to maintain luminal patency.…”