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Rising proportion of young individuals with rectal cancer in Mexico: Analysis in a cancer center
Recent trends have identified an increasing number of young individuals with rectal and colon cancers. These individuals, who are younger than 50 years old, in most instances would not meet screening guidelines. We aimed to report the characteristics and trend of the rising proportion of young individuals been diagnosed with rectal cancer at our institution.
We retrospectively reviewed medical records of patients with proven diagnosis of rectal cancer treated at our institution between January 2010 and December 2017. Patient and cancer characteristics were collected. The following data from the clinical records were retrospectively collected: age, gender, diagnostic date, primary tumor location, stage and histology.
A total of 141 patients with rectal cancer were identified. The mean age was 52 years (23 -92 years) and 57 % were male and 43 % were female. Fifty patients (41.3 %) under 50 years and 10 (8.2%) under 40 years of age. The proportion of young-onset rectal cancer in our institution ranged between 31% and 38% from 2010 to 2017. At diagnosis, 90% of the patients were symptomatic. The stage distribution in young patients was stage I 23%, stage II 16 %, stage III 45%, and stage IV 16%. Most frequent metastatic site was liver in 50 %. The majority were moderately differentiated.
In our work, the incidence of early-onset rectal cancer is higher in proportion than reported and increasing over the past years. Yong patients with rectal cancer in our institution were often diagnosed late stages. These findings highlight the emerging importance of young-age onset rectal cancer and the need to discuss strategies to early diagnosis.
The authors.
Has not received any funding.
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
