Are the polyps and cancers of the colon different under and above 50 years of age? – Five years results of colonoscopy in our department

Introduction: Colon cancer is the second leading cause of death in our country. There have been lots of efforts done to start the screening in the population at 50 years of age.

Aim: To compare the properties of polyps and cancers under and above the predetermined age of the screening.

Methods: Conventional colonoscopy and polypectomy was performed in patients (pts) with suspected colon tumors.

Patients: During the last five years we have performed 4914 colonoscopies. We had 1027 pts with polyps and 454 pts with colon cancer.

Results: In 104 pts under 50 years (group I) we have found 159 polyps (the number of polyps/patient was 1.52 in average). In 923 pts above 50 years (group II) we had 1555 (1.68 polyps/pts) polyps. The histology was tubular adenoma (61.6% vs. 56.9%) villous adenoma (17.6% vs. 25.2%) and carcinoma in polypo (1.25% vs. 1.47%) in the two groups. In group I 21/159 (13.2%) polyps were located in the right, 138/159 (86.8%) in the left side of the colon. In the group II 387/1555 (24.9%) was in the right and 1168/1555 (75.1%) in the left colon. We had 19 pts with colon cancer under 50 years and 435 pts above 50 years. The cancers were located in the left side in 14/19 (73.7%) under, vs. 276/435 (63.4%) above 50 years, while proximal localization was 5/19 (26.3%) vs. (159/435 (36.6%), respectively.

In summary: In the pts above 50 years of age the rate of the more dangerous villous polyps, the proximal localization of both polyps and tumors are more frequent. Therefore the importance to get into the coecum is increasing with age.