Colorectal Cancer Admissions Related to UC Have Not Decreased

Although the overall number of patients hospitalized for colorectal cancer (CRC) decreased from 2010 to 2014, the number of CRC admissions related to ulcerative colitis (UC) did not decline, according to new research presented at the 2019 Advances in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (AIBD) Meeting.

“While CRC surveillance guidelines exist for UC, appropriate and universal implementation of these recommendations may be the single largest limiting factor hampering decreases in CRC admissions related to UC,” the study authors wrote.

To determine the proportion of CRC-related hospital admissions in patients with UC, the researchers used ICD-9-CM codes to identify all principal discharges of CRC among patients from the 2008-2014 National Inpatient Sample database cohort.

Of the 564,372 patients in the database who were admitted to a hospital with a principal diagnosis of CRC, 1459 of the admissions (0.25%) were related to UC.

The number of patients hospitalized for CRC decreased from 114,038 in 2010 to 110,475 in 2014. However, the proportion of discharges with UC-related CRC did not change significantly over this same timeframe (0.25% in 2010 vs 0.29% in 2014).

Patients with UC-related CRC were more likely to undergo colon surgery during admission than the general population with CRC (75% vs 60%). The mortality rate among those with UC-related CRC is also significantly lower than among the general population with CRC (0.65% vs 2.34%).

According to the researchers, UC-related CRC was more common among men and younger people. UC-related CRC was also less likely to be associated with liver metastasis and lung metastasis compared with CRC unrelated to UC.

“Low frequency of liver and lung metastases demonstrate that [the] UC-related CRCs [that are] detected are found in early stages,” the researchers concluded.

—Colleen Murphy

Reference:

Senatore F, Bhurwal A, Seril D. Ulcerative colitis related colorectal cancer admissions—insight from national database [poster 088]. Presented at: 2019 AIBD Meeting; December 12-14, 2019; Orlando, FL. https://www.consultant360.com/meeting-materials/ulcerative-colitis-related-colorectal-cancer-admissions-insights-national-cancer. Accessed December 12, 2019.