Documento #223

[Cancer of the penis in Cambodia].
The prevalence of penis cancer in Cambodia is comparable with some Far-East and Latino-American countries. Circumcision performed as a religious observance among Jews or undergone as a regular practice among older Moslems children (the Islam Kmers in Cambodia) might provide an indirect protection against this kind of cancer. It indeed helps in ensuring proper personnal hygiene and in improving the detection, the treatment and the aftercare of all the mild lesions which possibly can pave the way to cancer. Out of of 253 observed cases recorded during a 10 years period (from 1960 to 1970), 164 were treated and followed up by the same surgical team from 1964 to 1970. They stress on those etiopathogenic factors and make possible a description of the reported "anatomoclinical" forms. The use of radiumtherapy either by contact or by means of needles is quite effective; however, when corpora cavernosa are involved, it will be often necessary to perform either a partial amputation or to an emasculation in case of entirely overspreading lesions. As metastases are of rare occurence, it is regarded as a "mild cancer"; however the sequelae due to the treatment are far from small importance. Through better personnal hygiene, detection, treatment, and surveillance of inflammations and benign tumors, with the renforcement of circumcision as a regular practice for every case of phimosis or chronic lesions, an effective prevention of this kind of cancer will expectedly be carried out in Cambodia and its prevalence will be reduced to a rate similar to that in European countries.