Digestive Disease Week 2011 Update

Finding colorectal cancer patients with Lynch syndrome helps both patients and their families to prevent cancer.

Lynch patients are at high risk for a second or third colon cancer, so identifying them before their colorectal surgery may change the operation planned.  Surgeons may want to remove the entire colon to prevent another colon cancer, and women may choose to have a hysterectomy during the same surgery to prevent endometrial cancer.

Because young patients are more likely to have Lynch syndrome, pathologists at the Mayo Clinic tested tumors from patients 50 years old or younger for microsatellite instability (MSI) after their surgery if they had not been tested preoperatively. Read the rest of this entry »