Colon Cancer Treatments - Breaking The Myths On Colon Cancer

Colon cancer can be prevented and there are effective treatments for colon cancer.

One commonly hears of someone or other dying from colorectal or colon cancer, so there are impression that one cannot prevent colorectal cancer because it seems to strike randomly, and there is no point for getting tested since there is 'no treatment' for colon cancer anyway.

Well, the truth is colorectal cancer is highly preventable.  It is a matter of catching the colon cancer symptoms early.  If the colon caner symptoms are detected early, colon cancer survivability is a 5 year survial rate of more than 95%.  This is one of the cancers that can really be cured, which is gratifying.

Colorectal cancer can be treated because it develop from polyps.  These caolon cancer polyps are mushroom like growths on the inner wall of intestines.  It is believed that 90% of colon cancer cases arise from polyps.

At the early stage of growth, these polyps are small and not dangerous.  But these polyps are left to grow, they can become dangerous.  The crux is that the colorectal cancer is silent killer, meaning that there are no symptoms of polyp growth until they are large enough to cause physically detectable problems, such as changes in the bowel habits and perhaps blood in the stools.

Small polyps, thoes less than 2 cm, usually don't present symptoms.  If they have cancerous change, they are usually in the early stage or Stage One disease.  Colonoscopy can detect the polyp and it may be removed easily through polypectology in day surgery.  These days, colonoscopy may be done with a sedative given or even with the patient conscious.  The reason that the patient will not feel any pain because intestines do not contain any receptors for such stimuli.

[tags]Colon Cancer[/tags]