Right and left colorectal cancer: Differences in post-surgical-care outcomes and survival in elderly patients

Abstract

(1) There is evidence of the embryological, anatomical, histological, genetic and immuno-logical differences between right colon cancer (RCC) and left colon cancer (LCC). This research has the general objective of studying the differences in outcome between RCC and LCC. (2) A longitudinal analytical study with prospective follow-up of the case–control type was conducted from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2017 including 398 patients with 1:1 matching, depending on the location of the tumor. Inclusion criteria: programmed colectomies, 15 cm above the anal margin, adults and R0 surgery. (3) Precisely 6.8% of the exitus occurred in the first 6 months of the intervention. At 6 months, patients with LCC presented a mean survival of 7 months higher than RCC (p = 0.028). In the first stages, it can be observed that most of the exitus are for patients with RCC (stage I p = 0.021, stage II p = 0.014). In the last stages, the distribution of the deaths does not show differences between locations (stage III p = 0.683, stage IV p = 0.898). (4) The results show that RCC and LCC are signifi-cantly different in terms of evolution, progression, complications and survival. Patients with RCC have a worse prognosis, even in the early stages of the disease, due to more advanced N stages, larger tumor size, more frequently poorly differentiated tumors and a greater positivity of lymphovascular invasion than LCC.