Colon Cancer Screening

Depending on where you live, colorectal cancer or cancer of either the colon or rectum is the second to third leading cause of new cancer diagnoses and cancer deaths. This is true of both men and women. In the US, about 141,000 new cases of cancer of the colon or rectum will be discovered and about 49,000 of these people will ultimately die of their disease. And it’s a completely preventable disease.

Colorectal cancer generally arises from polyps within the colon—polyps that can be detected using a flexible sigmoidoscopy test or more commonly, a colonoscopy. Polyps can be completely benign, pre-cancerous or cancerous. In any event, they can be removed using a snare that removes the polyp at the base. It is then examined under the microscope. Those without polyps are basically safe from having colorectal cancer.

The rate of colon cancer is fortunately going down because people are having colonoscopies beginning at age 50 years and repeating the test every 10 years if there are no polyps, sooner if polyps are found and removed.

Colon and rectal cancer are completely curable. If found in its early stages, the cancer is curable in about 75 percent of cases are completely curable. About 90 percent of people who go through treatment of early stage cancer live past five years. It is also possible to detect the disease before it even occurs by checking and removing all polyps, no matter how small, through the colonoscopy examination. It takes a long time to have a polyp turn into cancer.

More than 90 percent of colon cancer cases are detected after age 50 years. Those that get cancer early tend to be those people who have a genetic background that predisposes them to getting early colon cancer or those who have inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn’s colitis or ulcerative colitis.

Early colon cancer has no symptoms. More advanced colon cancer has symptoms of diarrhea, constipation, bleeding from the rectum, narrow stools, abdominal discomfort and abdominal gas. Once you get the symptoms, you almost always have advanced colon cancer that is, for the most part, incurable or very difficult to cure.

Screening is basically the only way to reduce the risk of colon cancer. It is estimated that over half of all cases of colon cancer can be prevented if a person gets screened properly and if you adopted healthy physical activity, maintained your body weight at a healthy weight, ate less red meat and decreased alcohol consumption. Fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are excellent ways to reduce your risk of colon cancer.