Is being diagnosed with colon cancer under forty a bad sign? Not according to recently published research that found younger patients were no more likely to die of their cancer than older patients.
Surgeons at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York reviewed a database of more than 1,300 patients with stage I-III colon cancer who had surgery between 1990 and 2001.
Five percent (68 patients) were forty years old or younger when they were diagnosed. They were more likely to have left-sided cancers, but were no more likely than older patients to have symptoms, be diagnosed at an advanced stage, or have worse pathology.
They did have more lymph nodes removed and tested — a median of 18 nodes for younger patients versus 14 for those over age 40.
They were also more likely to have chemotherapy, especially for stage II cancer. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of the forty and under group with stage II cancers had chemotherapy after surgery compared to 14 percent of older patients.
After five years there was no difference in cancer-specific survival between the younger and older patients — 86 percent vs 87 percent. However, overall survival (death from any cause) was significantly higher in younger patients where 84% were alive compared to 73% of those diagnosed over the age of 40.
The team concluded,
Younger patients undergoing complete resection of stage I–III colon cancer had disease-specific survival similar to older patients. However, younger patients had more nodes retrieved from their specimens and were more likely to receive adjuvant therapy, especially for node-negative disease. These factors may have contributed to their overall favorable outcome.
SOURCE: Quah et al, Annals of Surgical Oncology, Volume 14, Number 10, October 2007.
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