American Cancer Society plans for a long-range study of colonic and rectal cancer

Our plain-English summary of American Cancer Society plans for a long-range study of colonic and rectal cancer, by E.C. Hammond (Diseases of the Colon and Rectum, 1970).

The study

• Author: E.C. Hammond
• Journal: Diseases of the Colon and Rectum
• Published: 1970;13(2):108-11
• Cited by: 3 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 002457).

In plain English

This article is the text of a talk the author gave to the American Proctologic Society in June 1969. It reports no new study results. It describes American Cancer Society plans for long-range research into the causes of colon and rectal cancer and asks the audience for suggestions. Three projects were planned. The first was analysis of a prospective study of more than 1,000,000 men and women enrolled in late 1959. The second was a study of 16,000 asbestos workers, including a search for asbestos fibers in colorectal tissue from those who died. The third was an autopsy study of colorectal tissue, with 194 specimens collected so far. The author noted that an earlier prospective study by Selikoff, Churg and the author, of 672 men who had worked with asbestos for 20 years or longer, unexpectedly found a colorectal cancer death rate about 3.5 times the rate for all men in the United States. The author named occupational exposure to asbestos dust, ulcerative colitis and familial polyposis as the only three things found so far to be highly related to later colorectal cancer. The author warned that immediate success could not be guaranteed.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Text of a talk describing planned and ongoing research (a research plan); not a report of new study results
• Who was studied: No study population of its own. The planned projects covered a prospective study of more than 1,000,000 men and women enrolled in late 1959, a study of 16,000 asbestos workers, and autopsy colorectal specimens (194 collected so far from the Veterans Hospital of East Orange, N.J.)
• Exposure: Occupational exposure to asbestos dust (fiber types not named). The earlier study covered men who had worked with asbestos for 20 years or longer.
• Main results:
  • Reported from an earlier prospective study by Drs. Selikoff, Churg and the author, not from this article: among 672 men who had worked with asbestos for 20 years or longer, the death rate from colorectal cancer was about 3.5 times as high as the rate for all men in the United States. No confidence interval or case count is given.
  • Progress on the autopsy project: 194 colorectal autopsy specimens had been collected so far from the Veterans Hospital of East Orange, N.J.
• The authors' conclusion: The author stated that, up to that time, only three things had been found to be highly related to the later occurrence of colorectal cancer: ulcerative colitis, familial polyposis, and occupational exposure to asbestos dust.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author said there were scarcely any leads or plausible hypotheses to test, which makes designing research difficult.
  • The author said immediate success could not be guaranteed.
  • In the autopsy project, the whole colon and rectum cannot be serially sectioned, so tissue samples must be selected for examination.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Colon cancer.

Related studies

• Occupational Asbestos Exposure and Incidence of Colon and Rectal Cancers in French Men: The Asbestos-Related Diseases Cohort (ARDCo-Nut) — C. Paris, I. Thaon, et al. (2017)
• Asbestos exposure and neoplasia — I.J. Selikoff, J. Churg, et al. (1964)
• A meta-analysis of colorectal cancer and asbestos exposure — D.M. Homa, D.H. Garabrant, et al. (1994)
• Simultaneous occurrence of a rectal carcinoma and a diffuse well differentiated papillary mesothelioma of the peritoneum — G.R. Jatzko, J. Jester (1997)
• Localized biphasic malignant peritoneal mesothelioma presenting as a rectal tumor — K. Saisho, S. Fujiwara, et al. (2020)
• Metastasis of pleural mesothelioma presenting as bleeding colonic polyp — S. Sibio, P. Sammartino, et al. (2011)

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