Although nearly four out of ten stage III colon cancer patients had serious financial problems during treatment, treatment related expenses were particularly hard on patients under fifty.  After taking all factors into account, young patients were more than fifty times times more likely to experience financial hardship than patients over 75.  Treatment costs drove them to:

• be in debt
• have to borrow money from family or friends
• sell or refinance their homes
• experience a more than 20 percent drop in income

Financial difficulties sometimes led to stopping treatment early despite the fact that nearly all patients had insurance. 5.4 percent skipped treatments and 7.2 percent refused treatment altogether because of financial problems. Young patients were nearly nine times more likely to skip or refuse treatments.

Patients with incomes under $30,000 were six times more likely not to get recommended treatment. Not being able to work because of disability, leave of absence or employment also raised risk of not getting treatment. Read the rest of this entry »

Older men with several kinds of cancer–including colon cancer–do as well or better in the Veterans’ Health Administration as men covered by Medicare, according to a new study published by the Journal of Clinical Oncology in an advanced online release.

The Veterans’ Administration is the nation’s largest integrated health system, providing care for 6 million veterans a year who are eligible because of either service-related disabilities or economic disadvantage. The VHA launched a major reorganization in the mid-1990s to improve its quality of care through electronic records, better care coordination and mistake detection, and improved screening. Read the rest of this entry »

A Colon Polyp Snared and Gone

We thought it was true . . . and now research comes along with evidence.

Colonoscopy reduces death from colorectal cancer.

In a follow-up analysis from the National Polyp Study, people who had adenomas — the risky kind of polyps — removed during the study were much less likely to die from colon or rectal cancer than  the general US population.  In fact, removing adenomas cut the death rate from colorectal cancer in half.

We knew that colonoscopies find and remove precancerous polyps and reduce the number of new colorectal cancers, but this is the first study to actually link colonoscopy to cutting back death from colorectal cancer.

There was good news in the study for people who didn’t have adenomas too. They had a very low risk of colorectal cancer death. Only one person out of nearly 800 with no adenomas found at the initial exam  died of colorectal cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

New guidance from the American College of Physicians advises doctors to evaluate each patient’s individual risk and base colorectal cancer screening on that assessment.

The four point guidance statement says:

• Clinicians should perform an individual colorectal cancer risk assessment for all adults.
• Average risk adults should be screened at age 50. Individuals at high risk should begin screening at age 40 or 10 years before the youngest relative was diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
• Average risk individuals should be screened with a stool-based test, flexible sigmoidoscopy, or optical colonoscopy. Colonoscopy should be used to screen patients who are at high risk.
• Clinicians should stop screening for patients over 75 or adults with less than 10 years of life expectancy. Read the rest of this entry »

Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ) died early this morning from colon cancer.

Representative Payne announced last month that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer but expected to make a full recovery. However, last week he took a sudden turn for the worse and was flown home to New Jersey where he was placed in hospice care at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. He was 77.

The first black member of Congress from New Jersey, Representative Payne served the 10th Congressional District for 23 years. He was planning to run for a twelfth term this year, vowing to run again only last month.

A strong champion for human rights in Africa, militants fired mortar shell at his plane as it left Mogadishu in 2009. He was the author of the Sudan Peace Act, which condemned genocide and helped bring famine relief to civilians starving in the Sudan.

He was also a tireless advocate for education, saying in 1991,

Education and training get you jobs. Jobs get you your housing, health care and other needs. It’s really the key to all the social problems of the district.

President Obama has ordered flags at the White House lowered to half staff. Governor Christie has ordered all flags in New Jersey lowered as well.

Fight Colorectal Cancer mourns the loss of Congressman Donald Payne and the nearly 140 Americans who will die of colon or rectal cancer today.