Comparison of clinical and pathological characteristics of patients with a diagnosis of colon cancer over 70 and patients with colon cancer under 50

Colon cancer is one of the most common cause of death among both women and men. The incidence of colon cancer increases with age and generally is diagnosed at the age of between 60-75. Surgery is the most common type of treatment for colon cancer. After surgery, adjuvant chemotherapy is given to prevent recurrences and metastasis. Because of the comorbidities in elderly patients who are over 70 years of age, lower doses of adjuvant or metastatic therapy is given them or the other option can be the chemotherapeutic which has less side effects. We aim to identify clinical and pathological characterisitcs of elderly colorectal cancer patients over 70 years of age who were followed in Medical Oncology Department in Baskent University Hospital (BUH) and compare with colorectal cancer patients under the 50 years of age. 182 colorectal cancer patients were assigned to the study who were followed in BUH between 1998-2011. We classified the patients into two categories according to the age. Of the 91 participants were over 70 years of age and of the 91 participants were under 50 years of age. For colorectal cancer staging, TNM and Dukes' classification system was used. There were no significant differences between two groups for gender and percentage of patients having surgery (p=0.65/0.732). History of having systemic disease was significantly higher in the elderly group over 70 years of age (p<0.001). Adjuvant chemotherapy treatment was given to the 38 (%53.5) patients aged over 70 and 66 (%91.7) patients aged under 50 (p<0.001). We compared the both groups for progression free and overall survival time for all stages. But there were no statically significant differences between two groups. Our study confirms that elderly colorectal cancer patients get benefit from the adjuvant chemotherapy treatment as the same as patients under 50 years of age. Therefore, physicians should consider about performance status and systemic disease in elderly patients and give an individual treatment to them. Key Words: Elderly people, colorectal cancer, adjuvant chemotherapy