Primary squamous carcinoma of the rectum. Report of a case and review of the literature.

Squamous cell carcinoma of the colorectum is a rare pathologic curiosity. Since the first report by Schmidtman in 1919, only 69 cases have been reported in the English medical literature. The mean age at presentation is 52 years, and the disease presents itself equally in men and women. The rectum accounts for slightly less than one half of all cases. Survival appears to correlate with nodal status and findings of visceral metastases at presentation. Most tumors can be identified easily by physical examination and/or barium enema. Therapy is limited largely to surgical resection, although attempts at irradiation and chemotherapy have been made. At this time, the etiology of this disease process is unknown, but a likely explanation revolves around replacement of damaged epithelium by cells which undergo anaplasia due to repeated trauma. In addition to this review of the literature, the authors wish to add one additional report of a patient treated successfully by a multimodality approach.