Background: The Department of Surgery, Sawanpracharak Hospital, introduced the colon cancer registry in 2000 because colon cancer became the second most common cancer in surgical service.
Objective: To evaluate the outcome of colon cancer treatment and the colon cancer registry program.
Materials and methods: The database of colon cancer registry at the Department of Surgery, Sawanpracharak Hospital, was analyzed.
Results: There were 238 patients with colon cancer, 125 men and 113 women, with a mean age of 62.3 years (range 24-98 years). Sigmoid colon was the most frequent primary site of cancer (39.9%). Am emergency operation was performed in 121 patients (50.8%) with bowel obstruction or bowel perforation. The stage of cancer was stage I: 1.2%, stage II: 36.9%, stage III: 39.1%, stage IV: 20.3% and unknown: 8.4%. Local recurrence and/or metastasis occurred in stage II and stage III at 4.5% and 19.4% respectively. Mean survival time was stage 1: 32.2 months (range 20-49 months), stage II: 15.8 months (range 2-54 months), stage III: 14.5 months (range 2-55 months) and stage IV: 6.9 months (range 0-42 months). Postoperative chemotherapy showed benefit vy prolonging mean survival time in patients with high-risk stage II (25.4 months vs 7.3 months), stage III (19.6 months vs 6.4 months) and stage IV (14.9 months vs 1.5 months), p < 0.05.
Conclusion: Advanced stage disease, and inaccurate staging from inadequate lymph node sampling had an impact on poor patient outcome. Inaccurate staging and postoperative surveillance are the major problems when evaluating cancer prognosis. Cancer registry and active follow-up are the important factors in evaluating the quality of treatment.