When I tell people I work with colon cancer, the most common misconception is that people believe there's no way to prevent or treat the disease. In addition, I find there is widespread ignorance about the effectiveness of screening tests. The recommendations for colon cancer screening are not well-known by physicians or by patients. This is very frustrating for me and for many who work in this field or know someone who has had colon cancer. One of the messages that I wish to convey tonight is that although we're making great strides at screening, diagnosis, and therapy for colon cancer, effective screening tools are at our fingertips already.
Colon cancer is a disease that benefits greatly from effective screening.
This is because colon cancer starts as a noncancerous growth, in most cases. These growths are small, sometimes mushroom-shaped lesions called polyps. Most screening strategies for colon cancer involve looking for and removing these polyps. Our strategies, therefore, are to find polyps when they're still small and haven't transformed into cancer and then to safely remove them from the patient. I find that the common misconceptions about colon cancer screening occur when discussing who should be screened and how they should be screened.