Colorectal cancer in patients under 50 should be treated as a distinct disease with separate clinical guidelines, a leading oncologist says.

While international guidelines acknowledged early-onset colorectal cancer as a specific clinical entity in 2023, medical oncologist Dr Prasad Cooray says Australia and the world have been too slow to respond.

“Australia has the highest incidence of young-onset colorectal cancer, so it is a problem for us to address, without waiting for the rest of the world to catch up,” Dr Cooray told AusDoc.

He said Australian patients with early-onset disease were still managed under national colorectal cancer guidelines that were developed fundamentally for older people.