ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Screening for colon cancer in patients with chronic colitis has never been more sensitive. Advanced screening methods, which can find pre-cancer years before a cancerous condition develops, are leading physicians to question the standard treatment options—which include surgical removal of the entire colon, a procedure that can worsen a healthy patient’s quality of life.
That is a theory resulting from a study led by gastroenterologist Peter D.R. Higgins, MD, PhD, MSc, assistant professor in the University of Michigan’s Department of Internal Medicine. The study appears in the November edition of GUT.
“This finding raises the question of whether new, very sensitive detection methods may do more harm than good, and suggests that if we are finding very early pre-cancer, we may need to scale back our therapeutic intervention,” said Higgins.
Patients with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s colitis, inflammatory bowel diseases that cause chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, are at increased risk of colon cancer, and the standard of care requires regular colonoscopy for surveillance every one to two years.
For these cases, the traditional screening method is to collect random biopsies throughout the colon via a colonoscope to look for the presence of pre-cancer (dysplasia) in colon cells.