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A Preferable Test For Colon Cancer

By Jane Akre

 

LEARN MORE Injuryboard Help Center- Colon Cancer Annals of Internal Medicine  InjuryBoard Colon Cancer News  AHRQ on Prostate Cancer Screening  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center - Press Release    IMAGE SOURCE:  Wikimedia Commons/ polyp of the colon/ author: Dr. Ed Uthman

A new Canadian campaign is advocating home screening for colorectal cancer while it's still highly treatable.

The province of Ontario has one of the world's highest rates of colorectal cancer, which kills about 40 percent of patients.  The Ontario provincial government is promoting home fecal occult testing that looks for blood in the stool, often before it can be seen with the eye.

If blood is detected, a follow-up colonoscopy will be scheduled to check for polyps or other growths. The cure rate from early screening can be up to 90 percent.

A similar program in the United Kingdom cut in half the number of hospital admissions and deaths from colon cancer within five years, according to a study published in the journal Gut.

A study published in the British Medical Journal showed how a Finnish colon cancer screening program caught up to 40 percent of colon cancers early, according to Reuters.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends discontinuing colorectal cancer screening after age 75 for people who have screened negatively and have no signs of the disease.

Computed tomographic (CT) colonography, also known as virtual colonoscopy, has been shown to have a high accuracy in detecting precancerous and cancerous polyps and could serve as a primary screening option for colorectal cancer.

A new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, validates the widespread use of virtual colonoscopy.

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the U.S. killing about 655,000 worldwide every year.

The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute released a report recently showing that the rates of cancer survival rates are improving with deaths dropping by 0.8 percent per year from 1999 through 2005. 

Rates for men dropped about three times the rate for women.  The decline is partially due to a reduction in deaths from prostate cancer and lung cancers in men and in women, breast cancer. In both sexes, the reduction is due to fewer deaths from colorectal cancer. #

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jane Akre

Full post as published by InjuryBoard on December 01, 2008 (boomark / email).