A Review of Outcomes for Colorectal Adenomas

Using data from former reports, this study reviews and analyzes the outcomes of tumor recurrence, tumor progression, and tumor-specific survival of patients with colorectal adenomas.

Data were collected from 32 longitudinal studies of outcomes after the first diagnosis of colorectal adenoma and collected as individual patient results, that is, as failure times from the first tumor to the three outcomes. Altogether, there were 45,286 patients, including 22,148 for the outcome of additional adenomas, 23,796 for the outcome of progression to invasive carcinoma, and 2,602 for the outcome of disease-specific survival (some patients were available for more than one outcome).

In these data, the mean time to additional adenomas was 6 years, the mean time to invasive carcinoma was 15.9 years, and the mean tumor-specific survival time was 21.9 years.

Although greater than 50% of those with colorectal adenomas will have additional adenomas, few progress to invasive tumor or die of colorectal cancer.