VIDEO: With early-onset colorectal cancer cases on the rise, ‘everyone should be screened’
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In this Healio video, Folasade P. May, MD, PhD, MPhil, emphasizes the importance of educating patients about colorectal cancer risk and screening all individuals at the “right age and at the right interval.”
“One of the most remarkable things that has happened in the last 30 years or so in the epidemiology of colorectal cancer is that it is becoming more common in people who are under age 50 or 55,” May, associate professor of medicine and director of the Melvin and Bren Simon Gastroenterology Quality Improvement Program at UCLA Health, told Healio. “We used to think of this as a disease that affected older individuals in their 60s and 70s. Now we have to teach our trainees and young doctors to look for this disease in people as young as their 30s.”
While there is uncertainty about why CRC is affecting a younger population, May noted that it may be related to food preparation, pesticides, synthetics, dietary changes over time and “potential interactions between the environment, genetics, microbiome and multiple of these factors.”
It is therefore essential, she said, to educate patients about their risk and ensure they “get screened at the right age and at the right interval,” to prevent CRC.
Patients with a family history of CRC should be screened early — around age 40 years or even earlier if a family member had early-onset CRC, May said. In addition, individuals should be evaluated “as soon as possible” if they experience symptoms such as blood in their stool, new-onset constipation or diarrhea, severe abdominal pain, unexplained weight loss or anemia.
“Make sure that patients understand that everyone should be screened,” she said. “It isn’t just people with family history. It isn’t just people with symptoms. We’re screening people before they develop symptoms and we’re screening everybody — men and women — to make sure they don’t get or die from this largely preventable disease.”
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