Colonoscopy: nothing to fear from the ‘silver stallion’

[AussieNeil]

Given we are at greater risk of secondary cancers, are you up to date with your faecal occult blood testing (FOBT)? 'Bowel cancer is Australia’s second biggest cancer killer after lung cancer, claiming the lives of 4,162 people every year, nearly 95% of whom are aged 50 years or more.

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Lives saved

Last month The Lancet published results from the longest follow-up study of people screened for bowel cancer.

Researchers followed 170,034 people for a median 17.1 years, some screened once with sigmoidoscopy, which is like a colonoscopy but doesn’t go as deep into the bowel, and others who had not had sigmoidoscopy.

After adjusting for non-compliance such as study drop-outs, the number of new cases of bowel cancer were reduced by 35% in the group that had had a single sigmoidoscopy versus the control group; deaths from bowel cancer were reduced by 41%.'

Simon Chapman, Emeritus Professor in Public Health, University of Sydney provides a personal perspective of the benefits of screening for bowel cancer: theconversation.com/colonos...

Dr Brian Koffman's August 2012 blog on our risk of secondary cancers:

bkoffman.blogspot.com.au/20...

Neil

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero]

Yup... get the FOBT and if necessary the prod...saved my life... 😂

Don't put it off...you have about 8 weeks optimally between a diagnosis of stage 1 colon cancer and the operation and chemotherapy/radiotherapy...

Staging colon cancer

cancer.ca/en/cancer-informa...

Colon cancer moves very quickly and in CLL lymph nodes become involved rapidly.

~chris

[Leshere in reply to Cllcanada]

My father died from bowel cancer so I get 'scoped' quite often used to be every 3 years and some precancerous growths were found and removed. WOrst bit is the process of making sure your intestines are clean only vague memories of procedure since you get sedation. I was off the system since I have had clear scopes recently but am starting to campaign to go back again.