Clinical Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer in the Netherlands: studies of variation and trends with the Eindhoven Cancer Registry

The large bowel can be divided into the colon, the rectosigmoid, and rectum. The colon starts where the small bowel ends. It is 1.5-1.8 metres long when stretched. The rectum forms the final 10-15 cm of the large bowel, opening to the outside at the anus. The rectosigmoid is the transitional zone between the colon and the rectum 1. In the Netherlands, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer (14%) among males, after prostate (21%) and lung cancer (16%), and it is the second most frequent tumor (13%) among females after breast cancer (33%). In 2003, almost 10.000 patients were diagnose... Mehr ...