By Kevin E. Noonan — Cancer of the appendix is a very rare form of cancer, having an incidence of 0.12 per 1,000,000 person-years (Siegel et al., 2020, Cancer statistics 2020 70:7-30). Incidence is rising (by 232% from 2000-2016 in the U.S.) without a known etiological basis, particularly in individuals less than 50 years old, and accordingly it has become more than a curiosity as a target for cancer research. Treatment (perhaps not surprisingly) involves surgical removal of the appendix, but typically is detected after metastatic disease has spread to other areas of the patient’s body. A recent publication in…
