title: [Familial cancer of the colon without polyposis and the familial cancer syndrome. Apropos of 2 cases over 3 generations].
abstract: Two cancer-prone families are reported. In the first one four first-degree relatives over three generations presented a colonic carcinoma, three of them at a proximal anatomic site. For grandmother and father these occurred at ages of 43 and 54 years, respectively, for the son and the daughter at ages of 26 and 22. The grandmother underwent a palliative ileotransversostomy, surgery typically associated with a bad prognosis, but she survived for forty years that initial neoplasm and had an hysterectomy with oophorectomy at age of 63 for endometrial malignancy; she deceased at age of 83 a few days after surgical treatment of tumoral small bowel obstruction: pathological evaluation disclosed a fourth cancer on first duodenum. The second kindred shows over three generations 11 cancer-affected individuals, three of them with double primary cancer: breast and sigmoid, breast and endometrium, colon and Hodgkin disease. This pedigree includes 8 colorectal neoplasms occurring at 47 years of mean age. These findings are consistent with the cancer-family syndrome and hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer described by Henry Lynch upon four criteria: high frequency of adenocarcinoma, excess of multiple primary malignancies, synchronous or metachronous, early age of onset of cancer and autosomal dominant inheritance. Moreover the hereditary colon cancer is usually localised to the proximal colon, not associated to polyposis coli and allows a prolonged survival. Up to day such families are only identified by pedigree data. The identification of a cancer-prone family calls for an active follow-up of relatives putatively at risk starting at the age of 15 to 20.
mesh_terms: D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D000328:Adult; D003106:Colon / Q000473:pathology; D003110:Colonic Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010375:Pedigree; D013577:Syndrome
vernacular_title: Cancer familial du côlon sans polypose et syndrome familial de cancer. A propos de deux observations portant sur trois générations.