Colorectal cancers under 45 years of age.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The aim of this study was to evaluate patients with colorectal cancer under the age of 45 and compare with colorectal cancer patients over the age of 45 treated in our surgical clinic.

METHODOLOGY: At the Surgical Department of the Medical Faculty of Uludag University between 1986-2000 (15 years), 680 cases with colorectal cancer diagnosis were operated on. One hundred and thirty-six (20%) of these cases who were under the age of 45 were retrospectively evaluated and compared with other patients.

RESULTS

The family history of ten of those patients was positive. The most common referring symptoms were rectal bleeding (61.7%), and weight loss (29.4%). Tumor was localized at right colon in 19%, at left colon in 6.6%, at the sigmoid and the rectum in 74%. Nine of those cases (6.6%) were operated emergently, the rest (93.3%) were operated electively. One hundred and eighteen of the cases (86.7%) were resectable and 61 cases (44.8%) were showing distant metastases during the operations.

CONCLUSIONS

As a conclusion, in Turkey, young age group colorectal cancers are 4-5 times more common than in Western communities. Because of the high probability of colorectal cancers, considering the possibility of colorectal cancer and taking a careful family history will help to catch the case at an earlier stage and will improve the chance of cure.