Skip to main content

American Cancer Society Wants Colon Cancer Screening at Age 45

Image
By

Until last week, colon cancer screening for most folks started at age 50.  Why 50?   Why hadn’t the colonoscopy coming of age been set younger to prevent the tragedy of a 45-year-old, or an even younger person, developing colon cancer?   In the past 2 weeks, I had to give a young patient and his wife the sad and serious news that he had colon cancer.  Because of his young age, he never received a screening colon exam, as we routinely do with 50-year-old individuals.  Is it time to make an adjustment?

Our colon cancer screening system is not perfect.  It is not designed to prevent every case.  There have been people in their 20’s who have been diagnosed with this disease, and there is simply no way to capture them in the system.  Experts in disease prevention must carefully analyze disease trends and behavior to find the sweet spot of when to begin screening.  And, money is part of this decision.  Let’s face it.  We don’t have unlimited resources to pay for every worthy medical benefit. 

Determining when to recommend mammography, and how often this test should be done, is a very similar issue.


What Starting Age for Screening is a Bullseye?

Colon cancer prevention experts had believed that age 50 was the proper starting point for screening.  Delaying until age 55 would leave too many people at risk, and starting earlier would save too few folks and wouldn’t be worth the cost or effort.  That is, until now.  The American Cancer Society (ACS) issued new guidelines last week recommending that colon cancer screening start at age 45, a radical change from established dogma.  The reason is that colon cancer in younger people has become more common.   Keep in mind, this recommendation did not emanate from a gastroenterology (GI) organization who might be expected to endorse any system that would benefit GI practitioners like me.   The ACS revised its colon cancer screening guidelines on the merits.  We await responses from other respected medical organizations on this issue.  And ultimately, insurance companies and the government will have to buy in to this proposal.

This bold recommendation, if universally adopted, will save lives.  Maybe yours will be one of them.



Labels:

Comments

  1. Mark PaulsenJune 9, 2018 at 9:11 PM

    Regarding your second to last sentence: colon cancer screening decreases colon cancer mortality somewhat, but does not decrease all cause mortality. Are lives really saved?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Becoming a Part-Time Physician

By
Next month my schedule will change.  I will henceforth be off on Fridays with my work week truncated to Monday through Thursday.   I am excited to be enjoying a long weekend every weekend.  And while the schedule change is relatively minor, this event does feel like an important career moment for me.  It is the first step on a journey that will ultimately lead beyond my professional career.  It is this recognition that makes this modest schedule modification more significant than one would think it deserves.  As some readers know,   my current employed position has been a dream job for me.   Prior to this, I was in a small private practice, which I loved, but was much more challenging professionally and personally.   My partner and I ran the business.   Working nights, weekends and holidays were routine for decades.   On an on-call night, if I slept  through until morning, I felt as if I had won the lottery.   And w...
15 comments
Read more

When Should Doctors Retire?

By
I am asked with some regularity whether I am aiming to retire in the near term.  Years ago, I never received such inquiries.  Why now?   Might it be because my coiffure and goatee – although finely-manicured – has long entered the gray area?  Could it be because many other even younger physicians have given up their stethoscopes for lives of leisure? (Hopefully, my inquiring patients are not suspecting me of professional performance lapses!) Interestingly, a nurse in my office recently approached me and asked me sotto voce that she heard I was retiring.    “Interesting,” I remarked.   Since I was unaware of this retirement news, I asked her when would be my last day at work.   I have no idea where this erroneous rumor originated from.   I requested that my nurse-friend contact her flawed intel source and set him or her straight.   Retirement might seem tempting to me as I have so many other interests.   Indeed, reading and ...
69 comments
Read more

Will Smarter Lawyers End Frivolous Lawsuits?

By
How do you know if a lawyer is any good?  Of course, they've all passed the bar, but now their profession is lowering it.  While most of us strive for excellence, and raise our children to value this virtue, prominent legal educators are establishing a new quality intitiative for their profession.  Who says that lawyers can't reform themselves?  Perhaps, we physicians can follow their bold example and raise the credentials of our pre-medical students.  I’ll present the facts. You be the judge. I have written a dozen posts on tort reform on this blog, which always generate spirited and adversarial retorts from attorneys and their supporters. They accuse me and other tort reform advocates of carrying water for insurance companies. They repeatedly point out that I know nothing about the legal system and are unqualified to opine on its flaws. They deride me when I argue that effective tort reform would reduce the practice of defensive medicine, despite the re...
83 comments
Read more