Health Screening for Cancer

Ideally, you can detect the signs and symptoms of cancer before the cancer actually occurs. This is true of a few types of cancer but, in other cases, it is impossible to actually prevent cancer. Even so, most cancers, if screened for regularly, can be picked up in their earlier stages so that early intervention can occur. Let’s take a look at which cancers can be truly prevented and which can be detected at an early stage with adequate screening.

Colon cancer is a type of cancer that can be prevented completely. A colon cancer screening test in the form of a colonoscopy is done beginning at the age of 50 and then every ten years after that. If the doctor finds a precancerous polyp in the colon, it can be removed before it becomes cancerous. Sometimes a polyp is in the beginning stages of cancer and can be removed before it spreads to the rest of the colon. Either way, the survival rate is excellent and means that a colonoscopy is a good test for all individuals older than 50.

Skin cancer, in some cases, can be detected before it turns into skin cancer and can prevent skin cancer altogether. This is especially true in cases where a person has a lot of actinic keratoses or precancerous lesions of the skin. They can be found by visual detection. If detected early, they can be frozen or burned off so that cancer can’t form out of them. People with dysplastic moles will find that removing them will prevent the chance of skin cancer. Malignant melanoma can come from dysplastic moles and is a severe, potentially deadly form of cancer.

Other cancers can’t be prevented but can be detected early enough to make a difference in survival rates. These include breast cancer, which is screened for by mammogram. The mammogram can be done every few years in women or every year in high risk women and can find early cancers before they advance to cancers that can’t be treated well.

Lung cancer can be screened for in smokers or other high risk people. Lung cancer is detected through a CT scan of the chest or an X-ray of the chest. This is a screening test that is not done on everyone and there is no recommended schedule for this type of screening.

Ideally, a screening test can prevent cancer from occurring but, in some cancers that don’t have pre-cancerous lesions, screening is confined to detecting the cancer as early as possible.