An easier colonoscopy

It twists, it dips, it bends, it doubles back on itself. "It's torturous," said Dr. Robert E. Maloney, medical director of Chadwick Medical Associates on Grove Street. If Ms. LeBoeuf's colon were to be examined by conventional colonoscopy, a 6-foot flexible scope with a video chip would be inserted through the entire length of her colon, twisting, dipping, bending and doubling back. And she would have to have some heavy duty anesthesia to get through the procedure. Even someone whose colon provides a somewhat more direct route for the colonoscope to travel usually receives sedating medication so he or she won't feel the tube as it moves around the bends in the colon with the chip transmitting images back to a video screen watched by a doctor. Besides moderate discomfort, the colonoscope can, in a very tiny percentage of cases, puncture the colon wall, as it twists around the difficult turns. Despite all this, a conventional colonoscopy is nowhere near as unpleasant as most people who have not had one envision. But it's something that most people avoid having unless they are forced into it. And that's too bad, according to Dr. Maloney. Colorectal cancer - cancer of the large intestine and rectum - is second only to lung cancer in the number of deaths it causes. All of us know someone who has survived the disease or someone - perhaps more than one - who has lost, or is loosing his or her battle. Now, a new type of colonoscopy - virtual colonoscopy - as well as new DNA tests under development by a Maynard company, may improve the ease of colon cancer testing, and therefore encourage more people to be tested, thus saving more lives. The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 130,000 Americans will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer this year, and more than 56,000 will die of the disease. About 90 percent of colorectal cancers, according to Dr. Maloney, begin as small, noncancerous clumps of cells called adenomatous polyps. The rest arise from flat areas, which are usually part of the colon walls. In later stages, the cancerous polyps can penetrate the walls of the colon - whose length ranges from 4 to 6 feet, depending on body size - and spread to nearby lymph nodes or other organs, making survival unlikely. But, it normally takes several years for polyps to grow and become malignant. So, the American Cancer Association estimates that about 90 percent of people who get colorectal cancer would survive, if polyps were spotted and removed early on.

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Virtual Procedure fast, nearly noninvasive
By Geraldine A. Collier TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF