Abstract
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is considered as the third most frequent cancer worldwide and ranks as the fourth leading cause of death from cancer. The aims of this study were to analyze the epidemiologic and histopathologic characteristics of colorectal cancer among patients attending King Fahad Hospital at Albaha province, Saudi Arabia. Patient and method: a retrospective study was done over a period of 5 years from 2014 to 2018, the reported data on colonic endoscopic biopsies and surgical colectomy were retrieved and analyzed against sex of patients, duration and presentation of the disease, the histopathological characteristics of the tumor such as tumor differentiation and staging. Results: The data revealed a general increase in CRC incidence in both sexes with a slight preponderance of males (31; 53%) over females (27; 47%). The mean age at the time of diagnosis was 58 years (57 in females and 59 in males), with the majority of patients being older than 49 years (n = 44; 77 %). There was a slight predominance of cases among males (n=30; 51.7%). Site of occurrence was found that 39.7% (n=23) of tumors arose from the sigmoid colon, those developing from recto-sigmoid, ascending and descending colon constitute (17; 29.3%), (10; 17.2% and (8; 13.8%) of cases respectively. The endoscopic findings among study cases showed that most of the tumors were fungating nodular mass with the ulcerative surface. Regarding histopathological grading, more than half of adenocarcinomas were moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma in 32 (55.2%), 19(32.7%) were well-differentiated and only 7(12.1%) were poorly differentiated carcinoma. Conclusion: Our analysis of daily clinical practice provided valuable information as all consecutive patients of a secondary-care governmental hospital were included. The future needs of this demographic variation must be anticipated. Greater awareness of the potential for CRC in young people must be emphasized to all physicians.