Rectal carcinoma in a nine-year-old Nigerian male child: case report

Abstract

Carcinoma of the colon and rectum are rare in children and under the age of 40 years. A case of coro-rectal carcinoma in a nine-year-old Nigerian male child is reported. Family history was significant in the patient, it revealed that his father died three years earlier because of chronic diarrhoea and mucoid stool with associated on and off constipation and one of his elder brothers died eight years ago of colonic cancer at the age of twenty years. Exploratory laparotomy was done for the patient which revealed fixed rectosigmoid tumour with metastases to the liver, omentum and small intestine and ascites was also found. Hartmann's procedure with sigmoid colostomy was performed and the tumour was resected. Histological report of the biopsy specimen was consistent with poorly differentiated adeno-carcinoma. To the best of our knowledge, the youngest patient recorded in the literature is seven years old, which is younger than our patient, but this is still the youngest in our records.