New data bumps colon cancer to the top of the list
Salt Lake City—Colon Cancer isn’t just your grandparents’ problem anymore. New 2024 data from the American Cancer Society finds colorectal cancer has been increasing at an alarming rate in people under 55 for several years now. During this National Colon Cancer Awareness Month, GI Alliance – the premiere physician-owned and led network of gastroenterology practices in the US – encourages everyone to get tested now. Especially those under 55 with a family history or personal history or bowel issues.
Private insurers and Medicare are federally mandated to cover the costs of colorectal cancer screenings, as outlined in the Affordable Care Act. There are no out-of-pocket costs, no co-pays, no deductibles.
Due to delays in detection exacerbated by reliance on alternative methods like home testing kits and the age 45 insurance barrier, younger Americans are often diagnosed with more advanced cancers. With a 98 percent accuracy rate, the most effective tool for cancer detection and prevention is and always has been colonoscopy.
Fecal Immunochemical Tests (FIT), an at-home testing alternative, lags behind colonoscopy with an average accuracy rate of only about 79 percent. Expert physicians from GI Alliance remind people that at-home kits are also prone to false-positives and struggle to detect all polyps that may be present.
“Any screening is better than no screening, but if you are young and healthy I recommend colonoscopy because it is both a screening and a diagnostic test,” says Dr. Rebecca Voaklander, a GI Alliance gastroenterologist practicing with Utah Gastro in Salt Lake City, UT, who specializes in colorectal cancer prevention. “It’s a fact that cancer rates are increasing in young people, which should motivate everyone 45 and older to get screened now. There are certain lifestyle-related risk factors for colon cancer that you can change, but you can’t change your age or family history; everyone needs to be screened.”
It is estimated there will be more than 150,000 new colorectal cancer cases in 2024, with 53,000 resulting in death, according to ACS. Colonoscopy not only detects and prevents colorectal cancer, but enables your physician to immediately remove precancerous polyps during the procedure.
“What’s great about colonoscopy is that we can detect and diagnose colon cancer in one test,” says Dr. Voaklander. “We can also remove pre-cancerous polyps so that they never turn into cancer.”
In the evolving landscape of colon cancer prevention, colonoscopy stands out as the best and safest option at preventing, detecting and treating this disease.
“The overall lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is about 1 in 23 for men and 1 in 25 for women,” says Dr. Voaklander. “The earlier we detect colon cancer, the more likely it is to be curable; and colon cancer is one of the few diseases that have precancerous growths, polyps, that can be easily detected and removed through colonoscopy.”
About GI Alliance:
GI Alliance is the leading, physician-led, majority physician owned network for gastrointestinal care in the US. GI Alliance supports practice management for over 800 independent gastroenterologists, delivering the highest quality GI care for patients in 400 practice locations across Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah and Washington. GI Alliance partners with the nation’s premier GI physician practices supporting operational management, ancillary service development, and patient engagement, enabling practices to focus on providing the highest quality patient care while maintaining clinical autonomy. Investing in clinical research, care management strategies and sharing knowledge across the network, GI Alliance streamlines patient care, equipping physicians with cutting edge skills and treatment protocols that improve the patient experience and ensure the best possible patient outcomes.
