July 12, 2018 – Colorectal Ca Screening

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Anchor lead: New recommendations have been released regarding colorectal cancer screening, Elizabeth Tracey reports

If you’ve reached the age of 45, it’s time to schedule your first screening for colorectal cancer. And you can choose which screening test to use. That’s according to the American Cancer Society in their recently released updated guidelines. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, provides a review.

Nelson: The formal recommendation would be that if you’re at so-called average risk, which means you don’t have any polyps so far, you don’t have a strong family history, you don’t have Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, something like that, you haven’t had radiation to your stomach, you’re at average risk, that you should start at age 45 with colonoscopy or one of the stool tests, either the one that really focuses on blood or the multifeature ones.  :22

Nelson himself thinks colonoscopy is the most practical test, since if polyps are found they can be removed right away.

Nelson: Because when you find something colonoscopy isn’t just a screening tool it’s a screening and treatment tool.   :05

Nelson notes that a series of negative fecal tests is also quite reliable. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.