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 »

Five years after a colonoscopy found and removed polyps, one in ten patients will have a new advanced polyp and six in every thousand will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer.

Pooling studies that followed up nearly 10,000 men and women who had a polyp removed during a colonoscopy (polypectomy), researchers found 1,082 with a later advanced adenoma and 58 with colorectal cancer.  Median follow-up time was 47 months. Read the rest of this entry »