NEW YORK—Anal cancer is rare. Although the lifetime risk for anal cancer is about one in 500 in the general population, this increases 30- to 100-fold in high-risk groups, and both incidence and mortality have been increasing over the past several decades at a rate of about 2.2% per year.
“That’s a bit of a cause for alarm,” said Rebecca A. Levine, MD, a colon and rectal surgeon at Montefiore Medical Center, and an assistant professor of surgery at the