Colon Cancer Screening: An Ea... Video Transcript

Webcast Transcript

But certain insurances are coming around, noticing that if you find a polyp and remove it and prevent the cancer, that's actually cost effective, in the sense that a patient will not develop cancer and all the costs and all the morbidity associated with that. So, in the long run, actually, one single colonoscopy may be way more cost effective than allowing people the chance of the risk of developing cancer.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: How old should a person be when they start worrying about colon cancer and they start screening for this problem?

JOHN MacDONALD, MD: It depends. If you look at the average population in the United States, people who don't have a particular family history of colon cancer, don't have a personal history of polyps or colon cancer, then most people would say at the age of 50 it's important to do that. Now, if you have a family history, if you have had polyps in the past at a younger age, then you should start sooner. And, again, the advice of an experienced gastroenterologist is really very important in regard to this. Not only for you, but for your family, when you would want them to start screening.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Is there a difference for men and women?

MARK POCHAPIN, MD: Actually not. There's a real myth out there. Some people think of colon cancer as a male disease, and that's completely false. It affects equally men and women.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: How often should a person be screened once they start the process? What are the current recommendations?

MARK POCHAPIN, MD: That's a good question. The current recommendations are, for colonoscopy, once every 10 years. That's really based, not so much on clinical data, but more on theoretic data, and so that's being studied right now. If someone is found to have a polyp on colonoscopy, then every three years after the polyp is removed, to prevent and make sure that new polyps are found and removed.

And then things like barium enema, the recommendation is five years, although it's unclear whether that's really accurate as well. I think the most important thing is that people speak to their doctors every year, and discuss what the appropriate screening regimen is, because it's different for everybody and different family histories.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: What are some of the reasons that people don't get screened?

JOHN MacDONALD, MD: Colonoscopy.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: They're scared of it?

JOHN MacDONALD, MD: Yeah, absolutely. It's the same with: Why don't people get their blood pressure checked regularly? Why don't they get prostate exams regularly? Or why don't women get pap smears? There's sort of a natural inertia of the healthy to screening procedures. And I think when one can make screening an important part of ongoing healthcare, then people tend to do it.

Also, if it can be made relatively simple. For me, a non-gastroenterologist, one of the things that's attractive about colonoscopy as opposed to a yearly rectal examination, yearly stool for occult blood, sigmoidoscopy every three years, is that you have a procedure that can be done with the patient being relatively comfortable, under sedation, and can be done maybe once every five years maximum with most people.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Okay. Thank you both very much for talking about screening. Thank you for joining our webcast. I'm Dr. David Marks. Goodbye.

Related Videos

Colon Cancer in African Americans: Special Concerns