Colon Cancer Awareness Month

HARLINGEN, Texas (ValleyCentral) — Dr. Nolan Perez with Texas Digestive Specialists in Harlingen spoke to ValleyCentral about Colon cancer.

March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month and many people are not familiar with it, according to Dr. Perez.

Perez talked about the risk factors and how it develops.

"Cancers of the colon and rectum are called colon cancer and it's basically when there's mutations at the molecular level, that lead at the cellular level, to these things called polyps. The polyps then keep growing, and they can get another mutation, and without causing any symptoms, the polyps keep growing and growing, and then can turn into uncontrolled growth, which then becomes cancer. And that's when you start getting symptoms, and people come in to see us," Perez said.

What is the recommendation to people to prevent it from getting out of hand and catching it?

"Waiting for symptoms is like waiting for cancer, right?" said Perez. "So if you have symptoms please come in to get checked, that could be an early sign that we can detect cancer early and treat it and cure it. But the whole idea is to prevent colon cancer. Prevention requires you to go to see your physician. There are different tests or stool tests, we prefer a colonoscopy because colonoscopy is the only colon cancer prevention test out there. Because at the same time that you find polyps, you remove them. And that's the intervention that prevents the polyp to cancer sequence, it stops it in its tracks, and you don't get calling cancer. So prevention is key."

In addition, Perez says the best age range to have a colonoscopy is at the age of 45.

For more information call (956) 365-4400.