Mar 6, 2008 11:02 pm US/Central
With Colon Cancer, Early Detection Is Key
(WCCO)
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Caught early, survival odds soar to over 90%. Early detection is simple with a colonoscopy. (File)
CBS
Colon cancer is the second-leading cancer killer in the United States, but the topic makes for poor dinner conversation, so people don't talk about it much.
That's too bad, because it's also one of the most easily prevented cancers.
Ruth Edstrom clearly remembers the moment she first heard the diagnosis of colon cancer; advanced cancer in stage 4 and it had been there long enough to spread.
"And then I had to proceed through surgery for the colon tumor, a subsequent surgery for the mets on my liver and then six months of chemotherapy," said Edstrom.
Doctors gave Ruth a 10 percent chance of survival. If colon cancer is detected early, survival odds soar to more than 90 percent, and early detection is done with a colonoscopy.
"So this is a standard colonoscope. It's a fairly long instrument for examining a fairly long organ," showed Gastroenterologist Bob Ganz, who has performed thousands of colonoscopies.
In the most basic terms, it's an inspection of the lining of the colon.
Ganz explains the breakdown of the intestinal tract that ends in colon:
The gastrointestinal tract can be thought of as a very long tunnel.
The stomach is two organs; it's a storage organ and then food's ground up like a Cuisinart in the bottom half of the stomach.
After that food moves through the stomach where it's absorbed in the small intestine. And all of your food is absorbed in the small intestine.
Whatever is left moves in to the colon and the colon only has one function in life and that is to absorb water, and as that effluent moves through the colon as more water is absorbed. Then whatever is left comes out when you go to the bathroom.
That part is how Edstrom first got suspicious.
"I was experiencing things like rectal bleeding, kind of a constant bloated feeling, pain after eating," she said.
That pain and bleeding starts with tissue growths called polyps, and finding the polyps is the whole reason for having a colonoscopy.
The lights and the tiny camera at the tip of a colonoscope can give doctors an excellent view of all five feet of the inside of your colon. What you may not know is this same device lets a doctor take out any troubling polyps found while in there.
"We can remove them with tools we place through the colonoscope. So we have biopsy forceps and snares and wire loops and things like that that will remove the polyps before they can turn into cancer," said Ganz.
Because colorectal cancer runs in the family, Edstrom made her siblings get colonoscopies, which may have saved the life of a brother who had several pre-cancerous polyps removed.
"His cancer will be prevented. He will not get this cancer," she said.
Nearly 60,000 Americans die of colorectal cancer each year, but that number would be cut in half if everyone gets a colonoscopy when they turn 50. It's important to have one sooner if you have a family history of colon cancer. 
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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