Talk

If you’re 50 years old or older, you’ve been told “Time to get a colonoscopy.” But have you done it? Not exactly the birthday present you’d like, eh?

Everyone should do it, no one wants to, and until now we’ve thought it’s the best way to prevent colon cancer — which is the third most common cancer in the U.S. and the most preventable.

Colonoscopy is the “gold standard” for screening - meaning all the docs say it’s the very best way to detect colon cancer and pre-cancerous polyps. But today’s NY Times has an illuminating article about this:

[A] new study, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, provides a graphic illustration of how wrong that assumption can be, gastroenterologists say. The study, of 12 highly experienced board-certified gastroenterologists in private practice, found some were 10 times better than others at finding adenomas, the polyps that can turn into cancer. One factor distinguishing the physicians who found many adenomas from those who found few was the amount of time spent examining the colon….

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