Epidemiological profile of gastro-intestinal tractus cancer in Douala General Hospital, Cameroon: retrospective study 2016-2020

Introduction and objective: Digestive cancers have been a real public health problem for several years, both in terms of their frequency and their severity. We have the objective to assess the epidemiological characteristics of gastro-intestinal tract cancer in the Douala General Hospital.
Methodology: A retrospective study was carried out on cases admitted to the hepato-gastroenterology and oncology department of the said institution between 2016 and 2020 for management of gastric adenocarcinoma. We consulted all the medical records of patients admitted on this period. Only those with cancers of the gastrointestinal tract were recorded.
Results: A total of 238 cases were in the registers. The male sex is the most affected (55.1%). The mean age of the patients was 53.055 ± 14.35 years with extremities ranging from 14 to 87 years. The most observed clinical history is generally hypertension (14.70%), herbal medicine (14.30%) scarification (12.60%), epigastralgia (10.08%) and deterioration of the general condition (80.0%). The location of the liver, rectum, colon and pancreas were the most dominant, respectively 17.6%, 16.4%, 13.9% and 13.9% of cases. Tobacco use is 10.9%, this factor had a statistically very significant association with gastric adenocarcinoma (χ2 = 83.5, p <0.001). Alcohol consumption is involved in 30.3% of cases and not significantly in the development of gastric adenocarcinoma (χ2 = 102.7; p <0.001).
Conclusion: These results show that we encounter a variety of gastrointestinal cancers in our population and colorectal cancers are the majority. Alcohol consumption is involved in 30.3% of cases and not significantly in the development of adenocarcinoma