Everybody loves a good butt joke, but it really is a life and death issue.
Quote:
Patients whose cancer was detected by screening colonoscopy or FOBT had substantially higher overall survival and CRC specific survival 5 years after diagnosis (>85% and >90%, respectively) than patients whose cancer was detected by symptoms or otherwise (<70% and <75%, respectively). After adjustment for age, sex and education, patients whose cancer was detected by screening colonoscopy had a 65% lower total mortality than patients with symptom-detected cancers (hazard ratio, HR, 0.35, 95% confidence interval, 95% CI, 0.24-0.50) (Table (Table3).3). A 50% mortality reduction persisted even after additional control for stage and location of the cancer (HR 0.50, 95% CI 0.34-0.73)
Quote:
Results We analysed 1747 patients who died from colorectal cancer and 3460 colorectal cancer-free controls. Compared with no endoscopic screening, receipt of a screening colonoscopy was associated with a 67% reduction in the risk of death from any colorectal cancer (adjusted OR (aOR)=0.33, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.52). By cancer location, screening colonoscopy was associated with a 65% reduction in risk of death for right-colon cancers (aOR=0.35, CI 0.18 to 0.65) and a 75% reduction for left-colon/rectal cancers (aOR=0.25, CI 0.12 to 0.53).
Conclusions Screening colonoscopy was associated with a substantial and comparably decreased mortality risk for both right-sided and left-sided cancers within a large community-based population
And that applies equally to mammograms, Pap smears…even childhood immunizations which got backlogged during the lockdowns.