Clinical features of colorectal cancer in Iran: A 15-year review

OBJECTIVE: The increasing frequency of colorectal cancer in Asian countries, which have traditionally had a lower incidence than populations in developed countries, and a lower age of onset in Iran led us to perform a study on patients with colorectal cancer to investigate the clinical features of colorectal cancer in Iranians. METHODS: We studied 977 consecutive cases of colorectal cancer in terms of age, gender, and anatomic location during a 15‐year period (1989–2004). The patients were hospitalized in three referral hospitals affiliated to Shahid Beheshti Medical University in Tehran, Iran. Related data were extracted from the patients’ medical records and processed using SPSS ver. 12. Most of our patients (251 cases or 25.6%) were between 60 and 69 years of age. We recorded 534 men (54.3%) and 443 women (45.7%). A total of 36% of patients were between 40 and 59 years and 306 patients (31.32%) had rectal cancer. RESULTS: The highest frequency of colorectal cancer in our study belonged to an age group a decade younger than the range mentioned in the literature for populations in developed societies. CONCLUSION: Regarding similar studies, it seems reasonable to adopt screening a decade earlier for Iranian patients.