Poles are afraid of colonoscopy, although it saves them from getting sick and dying from colorectal cancer. Meanwhile, it is the second most frequently diagnosed malignant neoplasm.
1. Colonoscopy is an endoscopic examination of the lower gastrointestinal tract. It is definitely not a pleasant examination – it involves inserting an endoscope tube into the large intestine through the rectum – therefore it concerns private parts of the body.
However, this unpleasant examination allows you to detect and often immediately remove changes that we do not know about, because at this stage they do not make themselves known at all, and which may become dangerous in some time. These are polyps – benign adenomas that form on the inner walls of the intestine. In most cases, colorectal cancer arises from polyps.
2. You will do a colonoscopy once, and most often you have peace of mind for 10 years. This is because it takes about 10 years for an adenoma to turn into a tumor.
3. If polyps are detected and removed, bowel cancer will not develop – we stay healthy, and often also life. In contrast, the detection of stage I colorectal cancer gives 85-100 percent. chances of a complete recovery. The later the cancer is found, the worse the prognosis. In the second stage of advancement – the percentage of complete cures drops to 50-80%.
4. Are you ashamed because this is an intimate examination? – Poles are ashamed of things that they should not be ashamed of – confesses actor Andrzej Zieliński, who performed a colonoscopy after he turned 50. – This study is trivial if you realize how much anxiety and pain you can avoid with it.
5. Are you afraid it will hurt? This is a very individual matter. For example, slim people are certainly more exposed to pain. There are ways to fix this:
Check if you qualify for a colonoscopy under anesthesia.
Check if in which center you can buy anesthesia individually.
Check that a nearby center uses equipment that significantly minimizes pain.
The list of centers that perform preventive colonoscopy examinations can be found at: www.pbp.org.pl
6. In recent years, 18 thousand people are diagnosed in Poland every year. new cases of colorectal cancer. The vast majority of these patients die prematurely because too often they are diagnosed in the advanced stages. Illness means more suffering, difficult research, and stress than one prophylactic colonoscopy.