Right and Left Colon Cancer: Clinico-Pathological Features and Treatment Results (South Egypt Cancer Institute Experience)

Abstract

Background: Colon cancer (CC) ranks as the third most common cancer worldwide and is considered the second leading cause of cancer death. Recently, many international studies have made the observation that right and left colon cancer have many significant differences regarding clinico-pathological characteristics and primary tumor location has a crucial impact on treatment outcomes and overall survival. Our study was conducted to verify the presence of significant differences between right and left colon cancer. Patients and Methods: This study is a retrospective cohort study which aimed at comparing right and left colon cancer as regards clinico-pathological data and treatment results among patients with colon cancer receiving treatment at South Egypt Cancer Institute (SECI) during the period from 1/2008 to 12/2018. A sample size of 160 cases of colon cancer patients (80 diagnosed as right colon cancer and 80 diagnosed as left colon cancer) was randomly selected from our South Egypt Cancer Institute (SECI)'s tumor registry. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS program version 20. Difference was considered statistically significant at P-value < 0.05. Survival curves were conducted using the Kaplan-Meier methods and were compared with the log-rank test. Results: Right colon cancer occurred at an older age and was more commonly presented with abdominal pain while left colon cancer was more commonly presented with bleeding manifestations. More cases of the right side underwent curative surgeries whereas more palliative surgeries were performed to left-sided cases. Left sided cases were associated with a more advanced stage at diagnosis while right-sided cases were associated with a better response to first-line chemotherapy. More cases of the left side died due to metastatic disease. On the other hand, our findings demonstrated no differences between both sides regarding gender predilection, risk factors, sites of metastases, number of metastatic organs, histo-pathological examina