Survival Rate of Patients with Colorectal Cancer Younger than 40 Years

PURPOSE: Colorectal cancers occurring in young people are usually found in advanced stage and have worse prognosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical characteristics of young patients with colorectal cancer and survival rate of patients with colorectal cancer younger than 40 years. METHODS: The total of 534 patients with colorectal cancer underwent surgeries between March 1997 and February 2003. 487 patients were 40 or older than 40 years (control group) and the remaining 47 patients were younger than 40 years (study group). We compared age, sex, curability, tumor location, stage, histological type between the two groups. The survival rate by stages and overall survival rate were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS: No significant difference was shown in the comparison of the distribution by stage and histologic grade at the time of diagnosis. There were more female in the study group (P=0.005). The three-year and five-year overall survival rates were 79.3% and 74.0% in study group, and 68.2% and 60.2% in control group (P>0.05). The three-year and five-year survival rates according to stage were not significantly different between the two groups. CONCLUSION: In the comparison of patients with colorectal cancer younger than 40 years old and 40 or older than 40 years old, no significant difference was shown in clinical characteristics and survival rate except sex distribution.

Survival after Curative Surgery for a Colorectal Mucinous Carcinoma

PURPOSE: The clinicopathological significance of a colorectal mucinous carcinoma remains controversial. Previous reports have suggested that mucinous carcinomas affect young patients, are more advanced at diagnosis, and have a worse prognosis than non-mucinous carcinomas, but more recent reports have refuted those results. The principal aim of this study was to evaluate whether colorectal mucinous carcinomas are associated with a worse prognosis than colorectal non-mucinous carcinomas for patients who undergo curative surgery. METHODS: A total of 534 patients with colorectal carcinomas, including 42 cases of mucinous carcinomas, underwent surgery in the Department of Surgery of Gil Medical Center, Gachon Medical School, between March 1997 and February 2003. Of these, we retrospectively evaluated 33 patients with mucinous carcinomas and 407 patients with non-mucinous carcinomas who had undergone a curative resection. The age and the sex distributions, the primary location of the tumor, the stage at diagnosis, the curability, and the 3-year survival of mucinous- carcinoma patients were compared with those of non- mucinous-carcinoma patients. Thirteen patients were lost to follow-up, so we evaluated 427 patients for the overall survival rate by using the Kaplan-Meier method and the long-rank test for quality of curves. RESULTS: The proportion of mucinous carcinomas was 7.8% (42/534). There were no significant differences in sex and curability, but the mucinous-carcinoma patients were found to be younger (P=0.014), to have a Right-side dominancy (P=0.038), and to have a more advanced stage at diagnosis (P=0.004). The 3-year survival rates in stage-B patients with mucinous carcinomas and non-mucinous carcinomas were 92.3% and 80.9%, respectively (P>0.05); in stage C, they were 62.2% and 73.8%, respectively (P>0.05). The difference of the survival rates for each stage was not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Many reports suggest that patients with colorectal mucinous carcinomas have worse survival than patients with non-mucinous carcinomas. However, there was no significant difference in the 3-year survival rates between patients with mucinous carcinomas and those with non-mucinous carcinomas in our study.