A Clinical Study of Colorectal Cancer in Patients More Than 65 Years Old

Park, Byeong Seon; Baek, Moo Jun; Lee, Moon Soo; Song, Ok Pyung

Abstract

This report is a retrospective clinical analysis fo 84 cases more than 65 years of colorectal carcinoma treated surgically by the Department of General Surgery, College of Medicine, Soon Chun Hyang University from January 1991 to December 1995. The average age was 71.3 years; 49 patients were male and 35 were female. Tumor location was as follows; rectum 39(46.4%), sigmoid 22(26.2), ascending colon 12(14.3%), descending colon 8(9.5%), transverse colon 3(3.6%). The most frequent symptom in colorectal cancer was abdominal pain. The patients whose clinical symptom had been for less than 1 month before the hospitalization was about 31.0%. The rate of curative resection was 88.1%, Emergency operation was performed about 19.0%(16 cases). By Astler Coller classification, there were stage A 2 cases(2.5%), Bl 13 cases(16.5%), B2 28 cases(35.4%), Cl 2 cases(2.5%), C2 24 cases(30.4%), D 10 cases(12.7%). The average size of mass was 4.41 on. The most common pathologic type was moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma. Postoperative mortality rate was 4.7%(4 cases). The 5 year cumulative survival rate was 42.9%. In conclusion, the postoperative mortality and survival rates obtained in this study encourage us not to consider age as a limiting factor for curative surgical treatment. Early detection of colorectal cancer, adequate management of preoperative underlying disease and aggresive curative resection are improving outcome in the surgery of old aged patients with colorectal cancer.