When it comes to colorectal cancer, it is easy to think of the elderly, but although colorectal cancer is most common in middle-aged and elderly patients, and the incidence of colorectal cancer in the elderly is much higher than that of middle-aged and young people. However, not only the elderly can get colorectal cancer, but also young people can get colorectal cancer.
Moreover, the incidence of colorectal cancer among young people has been increasing significantly in recent years. Unfortunately, middle-aged and elderly people are more alert to cancer, so when they find blood in the stool, they will think about the possibility of colon cancer and go to the doctor in time, so the detection is not too late and the progress of colorectal cancer in elderly people is often slower, so even if it is found late, the treatment effect is relatively good. However, for most of the young people, even if they often have blood in their stools and the number of stools increases, they and their doctors seldom consider it as intestinal cancer, and they mostly think it is hemorrhoids or enteritis, so they can get rid of it with some drugs, and seldom do colonoscopy for this purpose. Therefore, once young people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer, most of them are in advanced stage, and most of them have unsatisfactory treatment effect due to high malignancy and fast development of colorectal cancer in young people. The incidence of colorectal cancer among young people is significantly higher than that in Europe and America, which is a major feature of colorectal cancer in China. Young people’s colorectal cancer is again different from that of the elderly. Compared with the elderly, colorectal cancer in young people is often of high malignancy, late stage, prone to recurrence and metastasis after surgery, and has poor prognosis. The occurrence of colorectal cancer is the result of both environmental factors and genetic factors, and the occurrence of colorectal cancer in young people is closely related to genetic factors because of their shorter exposure to various carcinogenic factors in the environment. In other words, young people who develop colorectal cancer contain more oncogenes in their bodies and are prone to develop colorectal cancer after only a short period of time. Therefore, the occurrence of colorectal cancer in young people means in a certain sense that their family genetic background is bad and prone to colorectal cancer. Many young colorectal cancer patients have obvious family history, while their immediate family members (parents, children, siblings) are 3-5 times more likely to have colorectal cancer than the general population. In fact, colorectal cancer is not scary, what is scary is that it is found too late and misses the time of surgery for radical resection. As long as it is found early, whether it is elderly colorectal cancer or young colorectal cancer, the treatment effect is very good. In order to achieve early detection, it is crucial for high-risk people to have colonoscopy as early as possible when common symptoms of colon cancer appear, such as blood in stool, increased frequency of stool, persistent feeling of anal drop and incomplete defecation, etc., so as to detect colon cancer or precancerous lesions such as colon polyps as early as possible and treat them as early as possible to avoid missing the time for additional treatment.