Colorectal Carcinoma in Patients Under 40 Years of Age

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the clinical aspects and the survival of patients with colorectal cancer under 40 years of age. Ninety patients with this disease were treated in the São Judas Tadeu Hospital – Barretos from 1968 to 1996, corresponding to 12.6% of the 716 cases of adenocarcinoma of the colon and rectum seen in the same period. Fifty-one percent were male and the mean age was 31.6 years. The most common symptoms were: rectal bleeding and abdominal or perineal pain, and the frequent site of the tumor was the rectum. The distribution of cases, according to stage was: I=2.4%, II=17.9%, III=33.3%, IV=23.8% and indeterminate=22.6% (TNM-UICC). The median survival time was of 39 months (ranging from 1 to 334 months). For the different stages the median survival time were as follows: II=85 months, III=42 months and IV=13 months. The proportion of cases found in this study is higher than those mentioned in the world literature, a fact that deserves further investigation. Also, it was observed that the proportion of advanced cases at diagnosis was high.