An Association of Mucinous Adenocarcinoma With Chronic Peri-Anal Fistula: A Brief Review of Pathophysiology of Rare Tumor

An anal fistula is a condition that has been discussed by various authors without coming to a consensus. The fistula of the anus is a passage that leads from the rectum to the anus. A peri-anal adenocarcinoma is an abnormal growth of cells in the anal rectal area. Establishing the relationship between the two, a lot of information was obtained from the existing literature which has used to come up with solutions to the objective of the study. The review was conducted systematically and included observational retrospective, case studies, and case series to demonstrate the data of valuable research. The articles were searched in PubMed, MEDLINE, and Google scholar using the keywords “chronic perianal fistula”, “anal carcinoma”, “mucinous adenocarcinoma”, and “perianal mucinous adenocarcinoma”. Among 50 journal articles, we chose 33 studies describing the clinical sign and symptoms, pathophysiology, etiology, and association between mucinous anal adenocarcinoma and chronic peri-anal fistula. After quality assessment, eight case studies and series were selected, in which seven of them showed the origin of mucinous anal adenocarcinoma from chronic peri-anal fistula. The existence of a long history of fistula-in-ano and the exclusion of any additional carcinoma in the body necessitates the analysis of mucinous adenocarcinoma arising from benign fistula. Likewise, the presence of fistula ought to typically precede that of carcinoma by 10 years, and this is one of the criteria for diagnosis. However, more investigation should be conducted to gain full information about the connection between these two entities.