And we don’t know what it is,” Krane said.Īdding to the problem – like with Torre – young patients with who see signs such as rectal bleeding or abnormal stools just don’t think “cancer.” Their doctors don’t, either. So most of us think that there is some environmental exposure, lifestyle factors that are increasing that risk. “The increase is happening too quickly to be described or attributed just to something genetic. The cause behind the recent spike is a mystery to the medical community. “I think it is really alarming,” Krane said. She said many of those young patients also have no family history of colon cancer and end up getting diagnosed with an advanced form of the cancer that impacts the last section of the lower intestines, closest to the rectum. “All of us are increasingly seeing patients now that are in their 20s and 30s coming in with rectal cancer, and it was really a rarity in the past when you saw a patient that age,” Krane said. Mukta Krane, Associate Professor, Division of General Surgery, University of Washington Medical Center, specializes in colorectal surgery at University of Washington Medicine and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and co-performed the surgery on Torre. Torre is in his 40s, but experts in the field say colorectal cancers are suddenly showing up in much younger patients, too.ĭr. I knew at that stage it was bad,” Torre said. “I was shocked at the CT scan result when I was at stage 4, which indicated that we had liver metastasis. I think we’ve gotten through the worst,” Torre said. And that to me, I knew it is cancer until proven otherwise,” Torre said. ![]() “It was flat, kind of ribbonlike, short, fragmented feces. Then in 2018, Torre said he had a bowel movement that his medical training told him he could not ignore. Over the next few years, the symptoms came back about once per year. ![]() With no family history of colon cancer, he dismissed it. That’s classically how an internal hemorrhoid is going to present,” Torre said. ![]() “The way it started for me was blood dripping into the toilet and blood coated-stools. He told KIRO7’s Deedee Sun that at age 43, he noticed something wrong. He’s also a husband and dad to two young kids. “Cancer was not even a possibility in my mind,” said Marcio Torre, who is a Gig Harbor physician in orthopedics and general surgery. In the last 10 years, they’ve noticed more patients in their 30s, 20s and even teens getting diagnosed – something that used to be considered incredibly rare.Įven the best experts in the field say they have no idea why. Doctors who are leaders in treating and researching colon and rectal cancers are discovering the age of their patients keeps going down.
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