The American Cancer Society predicts 2024 will see more than
106,000 new cases of colon cancer alone.
Those diagnosis are split nearly in half when it comes
to men and women.
While an uncommon topic of conversation,
it is important to get screened and try to prevent
this disease.
March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and joining us live
this morning.
Doctor Mariah Wright, a surgeon with Saint Francis Medical Partners,
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
How you doing this morning?
I'm well. I'm well. I'm interested in getting to know
more about why you think it's important to share this
awareness with people.
Absolutely. So one of the most important things is that
colorectal cancer screening guidelines have changed over the last few
years and I find most people still aren't aware of
that. Sometime in the last five to seven years or
so,
the guidelines changed from starting screening at age 50 to
starting screening at age 45.
The reason behind that change is that we were seeing
younger and younger people getting diagnosed with advanced cancers.
So we want to start screening earlier so that we
can catch those cancers before they become advanced.
The other part of this is that the most common
symptom of colorectal cancer is no symptoms at all.
Wow. Wait, that's that's huge.
I mean, no symptoms. So,
OK, can can we step back for a second?
So it's lowered to age
45.
When we're going to, there are no symptoms.
We're going to, let's get to more on that.
But can you explain some of the lifestyle factors and
what it is
that's maybe bringing this number down and why it's so
important to get those screenings?
So some of the things that have been associated with
an increased risk for colorectal cancer or a high fat
diet,
low fiber diet, smoking, alcohol use,
eating a lot of red meat
and if you smoke and drink,
that increases your risk even further.
And the typical American diet is full of high fat,
low fiber processed foods. And I think that's a lot
of what is causing that increase that we're seeing.
OK, now I really, really want to focus on this
no symptoms
part. And if there are no symptoms,
OK, we get the screening.
But is there anything at all that we can look
out for?
So the most common things if you are noticing a
change would be some blood in your stool,
either kind of mixed in or like a stripe on
your mouth movement.
A what? A stripe. Like a little stripe of blood.
Oh, OK, OK
And then you know if you have a change in
your bowel habits at all.
And what I mean by that is if you,
you know, if your poop used to come out about
like this and now it's coming out a lot smaller,
that is considered a change.
If you are noticing that it's you're more constipated,
it's more difficult to get bowel movements out or if
all of a sudden everything's getting really loose,
those are all things that you should seek care for
and that we would start looking at with a colonoscopy.
OK. What was interesting to me was when you said
that younger people are getting best people in their 20s
and 30s,
why is that? Is it isn't that lifestyle that you
were talking about?
So we think a lot of it is related to
lifestyle.
The, you know, we certainly have been seeing folks that
you don't get cancer all along.
A lot of them have some sort of family history
that puts them at an even higher risk.
But we have been seeing over the last,
you know, 15 years or so
that there are more people who do not have that
family history
that are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
OK. I know that you know you don't usually hear
the word cure and cancer.
What, what are the treatments and and what are the
outcomes that that we're seeing with this.
Sure. So
we what we see is that between 80 and 90%
of colorectal cancer patients can get back to normal health
if we
detect it and treat it in its earliest stages.
And what I mean by that is before it has
spread to your lymph nodes or spread anywhere else in
your body,
the way that cancer screening and colonoscopy in particular helps
with that is we are able to catch those polyps
that turn into cancer either very early,
before anything has a chance to spread
or before it even turns into cancer in the 1st
place.
And so is this a surgery,
Do they remove part of the
the colon? Is that, is that how you
get it out of the body?
So colonoscopy is a procedure typically done by a gastroenterologist
where they take a camera after you've done a bowel
prep,
basically pooped your entire colon clean
and they look at the entire lining of your colon
and if they see any polyps,
they will take those out and they try and remove
the entire polyp.
If they see something that looks more like a mass,
they may just biopsy it
instead rather than try and take the whole thing out
and potentially perforate your colon
depending on what those biopsies show.
You then would be referred to somebody like me who
would potentially take out part of your colon,
if that's what's needed, in order to remove that
area of disease that we're concerned about.
Great information. Thank you so much,
Doctor Wright. We've been putting the information to contact you
up on the screen and we just really are thankful
for this information today.
Yeah, absolutely.