BAZETTA — Preferably, you’ll make an appointment for a colonoscopy. At the very least, you’ll take advantage of Steward Medical Group’s free colorectal cancer screening kits, which are conducted in the privacy of one’s home.
The goal is the same — to prevent the state’s second-most-deadly cancer from claiming another victim.
According to the Ohio Department of Health, lung and bronchus cancers account for 26.5 percent of all cancer fatalities in Ohio, followed by colon and rectal cancers at 8.7 percent.
“The best test is the one a person will come in for,” gastroenterologist Amy Calderon, DO, said at the Steward Center for Radiology on Elm Road. “If you ask us, the best test is the colonoscopy because it’s both diagnostic and therapeutic because if you find anything, you can do something about it. If people have polyps, they are taken out right then.”
But for whatever reason — fear of hospitals, skittishness toward exams, inconvenience or other excuse — too many people won’t schedule a colonoscopy, gastroenterologist Meredythe McNally, MD, said.
“People say, ‘I won’t do it because you might find something.’ That’s the whole point. … This is a preventable and treatable thing,” McNally said. “If we find something, we can treat it and the survival rate is so much better, 90 percent vs. 11 or 14 percent.
“There’s so much life to be lived and such a good survival rate. Why take the chance. I think that’s kind of a no-brainer,” she said.
March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and Steward radiation oncology and laboratory services sites are giving away home screening kits for free testing.
“The kits are basically just done as a red flag,” Trumbull Regional Medical Center Oncology Coordinator Luana L. Andamasaris, RN, said. “They pick up blood, which is indicative of cancer.”
Blood in the stool also may show the presence of precancerous polyps, which are abnormal growths…