Reminder: Aspirin + Everyday = Lower Risk for Colon Cancer

Q U I C KN O T E

I just wanted to remind everyone that taking a baby aspirin, or 81mg per day, helps lower the risk of colon cancer by 30%.

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Cancer.org

Screening still crucial

One proven method for preventing colon cancer is to get screened for the disease. "It is still very important to get screened for colorectal cancer so that colorectal polyps can be detected and removed before they ever turn into cancer," says Eric Jacobs, PhD, strategic director of epidemiology at the American Cancer Society.

The American Cancer Society recommends regular colon cancer screening for men and women starting at age 50. People who are at a higher-than-average risk of the disease (such as those with a family history of colon cancer) may need to begin getting tested earlier, or have more frequent tests.

That goes even for people who take aspirin regularly for other reasons, Jacobs notes. "Aspirin use will not prevent most cases of colorectal cancer."

New 3-D colonoscopy eases detection of precancerous lesions

This is exciting! http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-07/miot-n3c073113.php

New 3-D colonoscopy eases detection of precancerous lesions

New technology offers three-dimensional images, making it easier to detect precancerous lesions

Cambridge-- MIT researchers have developed a new endoscopy technology that could make it easier for doctors to detect precancerous lesions in the colon. Early detection of such lesions has been shown to reduce death rates from colorectal cancer, which kills about 50,000 people per year in the United States.

The new technique, known as photometric stereo endoscopy, can capture topographical images of the colon surface along with traditional two-dimensional images. Such images make it easier to see precancerous growths, including flatter lesions that traditional endoscopy usually misses, says Nicholas Durr, a research fellow in the Madrid-MIT M+Vision Consortium, a recently formed community of medical researchers in Boston and Madrid.

"In conventional colonoscopy screening, you look for these characteristic large polyps that grow into the lumen of the colon, which are relatively easy to see," Durr says. "However, a lot of studies in the last few years have shown that more subtle, nonpolypoid lesions can also cause cancer."

Durr is the senior author of a paper describing the new technology in the Journal of Biomedical Optics. Lead author of the paper is Vicente Parot, a research fellow in the M+Vision Consortium. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) also participated in the project.

In the United States, colonoscopies are recommended beginning at age 45, and are credited with reducing the risk of death from colorectal cancer by about half. Traditional colonoscopy uses endoscopes with fiber-optic cameras to capture images.

Durr and his colleagues, seeking medical problems that could be solved with new optical technology, realized that there was a need to detect lesions that colonoscopy can miss. A technique called chromoendoscopy, in which a dye is sprayed in the colon to highlight topographical changes, offers better sensitivity but is not routinely used because it takes too long.

"Photometric stereo endoscopy can potentially provide similar contrast to chromoendoscopy," Durr says. "And because it's an all-optical technique, it can give the contrast at the push of a button."

Originally developed as a computer vision technique, photometric stereo imaging can reproduce the topography of a surface by measuring the distances between multiple light sources and the surface. Those distances are used to calculate the slope of the surface relative to the light source, generating a representation of any bumps or other surface features.

However, the researchers had to modify the original technology for endoscopy because there is no way to know the precise distance between the tip of the endoscope and the surface of the colon. Because of this, the images generated during their first attempts contained distortions, particularly in locations where the surface height changes gradually.

To eliminate those distortions, the researchers developed a way to filter out spatial information from the smoothest surfaces. The resulting technology, which requires at least three light sources, does not calculate the exact height or depth of surface features but creates a visual representation that allows the colonoscopist to determine if there is a lesion or polyp.

"What is attractive about this technique for colonoscopy is that it provides an added dimension of diagnostic information, particularly about three-dimensional morphology on the surface of the colon," says Nimmi Ramanujam, a professor of biological engineering at Duke University who was not part of the research team.

The researchers built two prototypes — one 35 millimeters in diameter, which would be too large to use for colonoscopy, and one 14 millimeters in diameter, the size of a typical colonoscope. In tests with an artificial silicon colon, the researchers found that both prototypes could create 3-D representations of polyps and flatter lesions.

The new technology should be easily incorporated into newer endoscopes, Durr says. "A lot of existing colonoscopes already have multiple light sources," he says. "From a hardware perspective all they need to do is alternate the lights and then update their software to process this photometric data."

The researchers plan to test the technology in human patients in clinical trials at MGH and the Hospital Clinico San Carlos in Madrid. They are also working on additional computer algorithms that could help to automate the process of identifying polyps and lesions from the topographical information generated by the new system.

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The research was funded by the Comunidad de Madrid through the Madrid-MIT M+Vision Consortium.

Written by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office

I love this story. G E T...C H E C K E D!

I could go on and on about all the different times unexpected things like this have happened in my office. Don't be scared, friends.  I got you.

l

-- Dr. Dale

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/03/3910400/flush-away-those-colonoscopy-fears.html

Posted on Mon, Feb. 03, 2014

Flush away those colonoscopy fears

By Lisa Gutierrez The Kansas City Star

FRED BLOCHER / MCT

Colon cancer survivor Danielle Ripley-Burgess, of Lee's Summit, Mo., supports an organization that takes an educational traveling exhibit about the disease. It features a 40-foot-long model of a colon that young and old can crawl through, as seen Dec. 14, 2013, at New Summit Church in Lee's Summit.

She couldn’t tell her mom that something was wrong because it was way too embarrassing.She didn’t even like to walk down the toilet paper aisle at the grocery store.So when Danielle Ripley-Burgess, 30, of Lee’s Summit, Mo., was in junior high school and began finding blood in the toilet after going to the bathroom, “I didn’t say anything about it for a long, long time. I was mortified.”

When she finally did, she and her mom, at first, did their own research on the Internet and figured that because Danielle was so young, the problem had to be something benign, like hemorrhoids.

Wrong.

Just a few weeks after her 17th birthday in 2001 she was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer, going from prom plans to hospital stays in the blink of an eye.

Today, at 30, she’s a wife and mother running a marketing firm – Semicolon Communications, wink, wink – and doing what she can to get people talking about what she once feared.

She’s not above using props, either. Big ones. In early December she arranged to have a 40-foot crawl-through model of a colon trucked into town.

The message? Being afraid to talk about what happens in the bathroom could kill you.

Colorectal cancer is the second-most deadly cancer, but the majority of cases are preventable with the use of a common screening procedure called a colonoscopy.

Precancerous growths found during a colonoscopy – recommended every 10 years beginning at 50 – can be removed on the spot. That’s important because those growths, or polyps, can stick around in your colon for years and become full-blown cancer.

“This is the only situation in all of medicine where the test used to screen for a cancer is also the method for preventing that same cancer,” said Larry Geier, a genetics oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center and one of Ripley-Burgess’ doctors.

“In all other situations – mammogram, Pap smear – the screening test may be effective for early detection but provides no ability to prevent the cancer itself.”

And yet, people fear the colonoscopy. Statistics show that only half of Americans older than 50 have ever had one, or any other type of colorectal cancer screening process.

The ick factor is high. Here are the excuses patients give Geier.

• “I don’t like the idea of a doctor sticking a scope up my rectum. I am too modest for that.”

• “I hear the preparation for the test is very difficult, and I don’t want to do that.”

• “I am not having any symptoms, therefore I don’t have cancer.”

• “I just don’t have time for that.”

“I have heard each of these reasons too many times over the years, and none of them are worth taking the chance, or what I consider to be playing ‘Russian roulette' with your colon,” Geier said.

Only 10 percent of all people diagnosed with the disease are younger than 50.

But while cases of colon cancer among adults 50 and older are falling, rates among younger adults like Ripley-Burgess are rising, according to the Colon Cancer Alliance.

“There is definitely a trend toward younger age at the time of diagnosis of colon cancer over the last two decades,” Geier said. “Changes in diet, better screening and more awareness of early symptoms may each have a role but still don’t provide adequate explanation.”

What happened to Ripley-Burgess was rare. She was diagnosed with colon cancer at 17 and again at 25, when all but a foot of her large intestine had to be removed.

“I have to be kind of careful with what I eat, when I eat.” No big chili dogs for lunch, for example. “It’s normal for me now.”

It was her bad luck to be, Geier put it, “genetically programmed” to develop colon cancer at such a young age. She has a genetic trait known as Lynch syndrome, which affects about 1 in every 4 to 5 Americans and is largely underdiagnosed.

Colon Cancer Warning Signs 

• Blood in the stool (frequently not visible to the naked eye), a change in stool habits, a gradual decrease in the size of the stool, increasing abdominal pain, unexplained weight loss

• Those symptoms are much more likely to occur when the tumor is in the rectum or the very last part of the colon. Cancers that are higher up in the colon frequently don’t signal their presence with these symptoms until the tumor is quite large. That’s why screening for the cancer when there are no symptoms is critical.

• Anyone with one or more of these symptoms should tell their doctor.

Source: Larry Geier, genetics oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/03/v-print/3910400/flush-away-those-colonoscopy-fears.html#storylink=cpy