Squamous cell rectal cancer in a young woman

Rectal squamous cell carcinoma (RSCC) belongs to rare gastrointestinal malignancies. There are no consensus recommendations for the treatment of non-metastatic RSCC, which can cause problems when considering optimal therapy.

The objective of this report is to point out that RSCC is a rare disease which needs to be distinguished from anal squamous cell cancer (ASCC) and the treatment of which differs from that of rectal adenocarcinoma.

We discuss the dia-gnosis and therapy of a patient with non-metastatic RSCC. A forty-two-year-old woman with a history of diarrhea and rectal bleeding was dia-gnosed for RSCC with locoregional lymphadenopathy, stage T3N1MO. Protective sigmostomy was performed for stenotizing tumor; then the patient underwent chemoradiotherapy with the effect of complete response in MR scans. Subsequently, the patient underwent rectal resection according to Dixon with histological confirmation of complete tumor regression and without detection of residual tumor in the rectum.

It can be sometimes difficult to distinguish primary RSCC from ASCC. Nowadays, there is no standardized staging system for RSCC, and it causes problems in comparative studies as well as in the determination of treatment protocols. The backbone of RSCC treatment is chemoradiotherapy.