Colorectal Cancer Awareness

Colon cancer screening with colonoscopies or occult blood stool tests is one of the most effective screening tools we have to detect early stage colon cancer.  Colon cancer usually evolves over many years from abnormal cells that initially form a “polyp” in the colon before they start becoming more aggressive and invading into the colon wall, which is then considered cancer.  Colonoscopies are useful because not only can they look and identify cancer lesions in the colon, but because they can also prevent cancer by finding those polyps and removing them before they have a chance to grow into cancer.  Most guidelines recommending starting screening colonoscopies at 50 years old, unless someone has family members with colon cancer or they have other GI issues as well.

Read the article at American Cancer Society here.