Gender Differences in Characteristics of Colorectal Cancer Patients: Eight Years’ Experience in Tertiary Care Center.

Abstract

Introduction and Objectives: Colorectal cancer (CRC) has become a very common researched topic in Saudi Arabia. Significance of the disease lay as the third most common cancer in the Kingdom plus the various risk factors it may be connected to. Smoking, obesity, age, and gender should be further investigated in our community to focus our screening and minimize the burden of this disease. We tried to determine the differences between males and females in term of demographic, clinical and treatment characteristics.Methodology: A retrospective cohort study was performed in all cases of CRC from 2006-2014 in King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Categorical data were presented as frequencies and percentages to summarize patients’ demographic data. Chi-square was used to compare between sex and the site of metastasis. Moreover, Cox regression was used to assess the risk factors on mortality. Results: Out of 581 patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer, 326 (56.51%) were males.The mean age of colorectal patients at the time of diagnosis was 59.7.Majority of the BMI was overweight 183 (37.0%) smoking history was found in only 18 (3.5%) patients. Most of the patients were stage IV. The bio marker (K-RAS) was done for 189 colorectal cancer patients, of which male and female patients had mostly wild type. Tumor marker Carcinoembryonic Antigen (CEA) showed that most of the patients were in the high range for male patients 140(48.8%) and for females 115(53.2%). Conclusion: No difference was found in regards to K-RAS mutation distribution by gender. High CEA was not associated to any age or gender. There was no statistical significance in relation to gender and response to treatment.