Experts Call for Action to Prevent Colon Cancer Deaths by Spurring Screening Awareness

Extract

After a 2-year research effort, a consortium of five medical societies is recommending new guidelines for colorectal cancer screening, which they hope will reduce deaths from the nation's third largest cancer killer of men and women.

But some experts have already criticized the guidelines as old information or lacking in scientific merit. And many Americans are unaware that colon cancer kills almost 55,000 people each year, and thus remain skeptical about the benefits of screening.

The new guidelines for colorectal screening were issued at a recent news conference in Washington,D.C. A panel of 16 independent experts developed the guidelines forthe consortium, which includes the American College of Gastroenterology, the American Gastroenterological Association, the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons, the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, and the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons.

“Our panel was a mix of generalists coming from the fields of medicine, nursing, consumer advocacy, health care economics, behavioral science, andradiology,” said Sidney 1. Winawer,M.D., co-chairman of the panel andchief of the cancer prevention and control program at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “The overall goal was to develop practical screening guidelines for physicians to decrease colorectal cancer mortality.”