Surgical treatment of colon and rectum adenocarcinoma in elderly patients

The results are presented of disease-free interval and overall survival in 53 elderly patients with colon or rectum adenocarcinoma treated with curative surgery. The average age was 75.3 years (median = 75.0); 21 patients were male and 32 were female. Tumor location was as follows: rectum 18 (34%), sigmoid 17 (32.1%), right colon 14 (26.4%), and transverse colon 4 (7.5%) All patients were surgically treated following the classical patterns for tumor resection. After pathological examination, which included the histological grade differentiation, the disease stage was reevaluated following the pTNM system. Overall and disease-free survival at 5 years, for all patients, independent of histological grade differentiation and disease stage, were 75.3% and 55.5%, respectively. Overall survival at 5 years for patients with grades I and II histological differentiation was 74.1% and 85.0%, respectively. None of the grade III patients (2 cases) survived more than 1 year. The 5 years disease-free survival for patients with histological grade differentiation I and II was 56.8% and 60%, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in overall survival for patients with stages SI, SII, and SIII, but the disease-free survival at 5 years by stages was found to be significant with rates of 100%, 67.6%, and 22.6%. Postoperative mortality was 4 (7.5%). The postoperative mortality and survival rates obtained in this group of patients encourage us not to consider age as a limiting factor for curative surgical treatment.