To explore the clinical pathological characteristics of colorectal cancer in young patients.

The Clinical data of 122 young patients with colorectal cancer in The First Affiliated Hospital with Nanjing Medical University from 2006 to 2016 were retrospectively reviewed.

122 patients were collected in the study, the mean age was 30 years old. Among them with male to female ratio of 1.3 to 1.The main symptoms were bloody stools, abdominal pain, intestinal obstruction. The tumors mostly located in the rectum and sigmoid colon. In gross type, ulcerative type was in majority in the young age group. In these young patients, most of them had adenocarcinoma and mucinous adenocarcinoma. The degree of differentiation was mainly middle-low differentiation. The young patients were diagnosed mostly in the advanced stage. The misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis rate of young patients was high, about 53.3%.Some patients of them with cholecystitis, chronic appendicitis or spleen enlargement. The main treatment is radical operation. There were significant differences in the main symptoms (P<0.01) and concomitant symptoms (χ²=13.335, P=0.001) between left colon cancer and right colon cancer in this study. However, there were no significant differences in the clinical and pathological features of colorectal cancer among young men and women of different genders.

The atypical clinical symptoms, high misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis rate, poor differentiation, higher malignant degree, poor prognosis are all characters in young patients. We should pay attention to the occurrence of colorectal cancer in young patients, in order to have early diagnosis and treatment.