A review article looked at the current status of PBT for anal and rectal cancers. PBT offers appealing potential to reduce toxicity, increase patient compliance, minimize treatment breaks, and enable dose escalation or hypofractionation, however, data on the benefit of PBT for rectal and anal cancer is derived primarily from preclinical planning studies for neoadjuvant treatment, therefore unclear whether statistically significant differences in dose distributions translate to meaningful differences in acute and late toxicity.

In cases where prognosis is favorable, PBT may mitigate long-term morbidity such as secondary malignancies, femoral fractures, and small bowel obstruction.