Surgical Treatment for Juvenile Colorectal Carcinoma (Below the Age of 40)

The characteristics of juvenile colorectal carcinoma were determined in a comparative study of various clinical and pathological findings for 31 patients below the age of 40 and a control group of 569 patients aged 40 or older. Juvenile colorectal carcinoma was most common in the transverse colon (22.6%, P<0.01) and had significantly high incidence of peritoneal dissemination (22.6%, P<0.01). There were no significant differences between the two groups with regard to sex distribution, macroscopic type of tumor, tumor size, histological depth of invasion, tumor differentiation, hepatic metastasis or rate of lymph node metastasis. The long-term survival rate for the juvenile group following curative resection was close to that for the control group. These findings indicate the importance of radical lymphadenectomy and progressive treatment of peritoneal dissemination for improvement of the prognosis of patients with juvenile colorectal cancer.