There’s an Easier Way to Screen for Colon Cancer - Article Health

When it comes to colon cancer, the most popular strategy for screening is the colonoscopy, which involves a nearly 24-hour commitment to the prep for the invasive and uncomfortable procedure. The benefit of enduring the screening, as doctors tell us, is that if it finds suspicious polyps, the colonoscopy can remove them at the same time. Plus, for most people it’s just a once-in-every-10-years ordeal.

It’s not the only way to screen for colon cancer, but it has become the default choice. This, despite the fact that no rigorous studies have shown that colonoscopy screening can actually lead to fewer deaths from colon cancer; medical organizations that include colonoscopies in their screening options have based their advice on the fact that detecting and removing polyps must logically lower incidence, and therefore death, from the disease.But in an editorial published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. David Weinberg, chairman of medicine at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, and his colleagues argue that fecal testing is just as effective as colonoscopy in detecting lesions that are potential colon cancers.

Weinberg addresses concerns over the emergence of colonoscopy as the default, pointing out that many people are uncomfortable with the procedure, and that globally, not every country can afford the test for every citizen beyond middle age. Even in the U.S., where the use of colonoscopy is high, access to the procedure isn’t uniform.

“From the patient’s perspective, the American health establishment prefers colonoscopy; I do think that’s probably true,” says Weinberg. That means people who aren’t comfortable with the procedure might not get screened for colon cancer at all.

That’s why Weinberg and his colleagues want to alert physicians and patients to the fact that alternatives do exist, including the fecal immunochemical test, which involves sending a sample of feces in a special kit to a lab for testing. The fecal test picks up signs of blood, which can be an indication that a tumor is present.

While effective at triaging people who might have growths from those with negative tests who don’t, the fecal test requires yearly updates and means the physician has to follow up with the patient to make sure the test was done and then communicate the results when they arrive from the lab.

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