Pattern of Primary Gastrointestinal Tract Cancer in the Southern Province

Abstract

Two hundred thirty-four cases of primary gastrointestinal tract malignancy were diagnosed at the histopathology laboratory of Asir Central Hospital over a four-year period, from 1987 to 1990. The current study is a retrospective analysis of these cases regarding rank orders, distribution according to nationality, age and sex, primary sites affected and the histopathologic pattern. Eighty-eight percent of our cases were Saudi and 12% were non-Saudi nationals. The mean age of patients was 60 ± 16 years with a male:female ratio of 2:1. Primary liver cancer was the most common malignancy (29%), followed by gastric cancer (27%), colorectal cancer (21%) and esophageal cancer (13%). Comparison of our findings to those from other provinces of the Kingdom are also included.

An Age- and Gender-Specific Analysis of H. Pylori Infection

“…8 Previous studies have shown that stomach cancer ranks sixth in all malignancies in the southern region of Saudi Arabia 9 and stands second among gastrointestinal malignancies. 10 A similar incidence of gastric cancer was reported from Dhahran, 11 and a slightly lower incidence from Riyadh. 12,13 The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified H. pylori as a group 1 carcinogen, a definite cause of gastric adenocarcinoma in humans.…”

Pattern of Primary Gastrointestinal Cancer: King Khalid University Hospital Experience and Review of Published National Data

“…Hepatocellular carcinoma's crude relative frequency (CRF) is 8.8% in a current study, and 11% and 17.6% in data published from Abha and Gizan, respectively. [16][17][18] These results are markedly different from the 5.5%…”

“…Certainly some types of gastrointestinal cancers have different patterns in each region, but the actual epidemiological data of such individual cancers is missing because most of the data either came from a small series or from a referral institution where the data is obviously biased by referral pattern. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] Tables 2 and 3 detail the frequency of gastrointestinal carcinoma and its pattern in different published studies. These show there is a marked variation in the frequency of individual cancer types seen in these treatment centers, even treatment centers located in the same city as the reported frequency of each cancer type vary significantly, based on patient referral patterns and the modalities of treatment available for referral patients.…”

“…Most of the data available about the pattern of cancer in Saudi Arabia in general and in the gastrointestinal tract, came from individual institutions, most of which are tertiary referral centers. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] These reports are based on hospital-based tumor registries and mainly address crude relative frequency (CRF) for various types of cancer, from which we may infer which cancers are the most common. Studying the pattern of gastrointestinal cancer in Saudi Arabia is very important for health planning.…”

Gastric Cancer in Southern Saudi Arabia

“…12,13 Gastric cancer is the fifth ranking type of cancer in the Asir region, representing 6.7% of all cancer cases. Gastric cancer represented 27% of primary gastrointestinal tract cancer cases with gastric to colorectal cancer ratio of 1.3:1.…”