Colon Cancer Screening Helps

Every month is a good month to highlight the benefits of screening for bowel cancer, also called colon cancer. Currently, the disease is the second highest killer of all cancers and an increasing number of people are being diagnosed with it.

The benefits of screening are clear. Some people can have a colonoscopy and can have pre-cancerous polyps removed before they ever get cancer. These people are screened more often thereafter so that any other polyps that grow get removed as early as possible. If an early cancer is found, researchers have discovered that there is a 95 percent chance that this person will survive their cancer after the proper treatment, which can include surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

One problem is that bowel cancer has few symptoms when it is in its early stages and when symptoms finally appear, the disease is usually too late to cure. Eighty five percent of all colon cancer are over the age of sixty but screening often starts at age fifty, especially to catch any precancerous polyps that can get rid of the chance of later developing cancer. It takes about ten years from the time a polyp begins until it turns into cancer. Generally, if you do not have polyps, your risk of getting colon cancer is extremely low.

Your history of colon cancer in the family is important to your chances of getting colon cancer. Some types of colon cancer run in families. If you have a strong family history of colon cancer, you need to talk to your doctor about getting colon cancer screening earlier in life—as early as in your twenties, depending on when other family members got the disease.

The colonoscopy is considered the gold standard of the diagnosis of colon cancer. But it is expensive. Patients can be given FOBT tests, also known as fecal occult blood tests, which take a sample of stool and test it for hidden amounts of blood. Blood in the stool can be a sign of colon cancer but can mean other things as well. It is a good idea to do FOBT testing in the years between colonoscopies. A flexible sigmoidoscopy is another test sometimes used. It uses a camera similar to a colonoscopy light but evaluates the colon only a short distance from the rectum. Doctors sometimes do a flexible sigmoidoscopy between colonoscopies which are performed every ten years.