Colorectal Cancer - Everything you need to know

Written by: Vladimir Comagic, MD on 05/03/2015

       Colorectal cancer or colon cancer is primarily a disease of a gene, and is caused by environmental factors or heritage.

 

 In our body there are tumor '' activating" genes, ie. oncogenes, and the opposite of them '' inhibiting genes' (suppressor genes) that normally prevent the occurrence of colon cancer or any other cancer. When they fail, the malignant disease - cancer appears.
Colorectal cancer is a significant disease for several reasons:

1.  First of all, colorectal cancer is constantly increasing. Since 2008 colorectal cancer has become the most common cancer of all cancers in both genders. In previous years the leading position in the number of new patients had lung cancer, and colon cancer was, depending on the country and gender, in second or third place.
2. Next, the cancer is one of the curable ones when discovered in an early stage. When the tumor breaks through the basal membrane of the colon and comes to the intestinal lymph nodes, the disease becomes more complicated. For example, 5-year survival rate for colon cancer in stage I of the disease is 80-95% and only surgical treatment is enough, in II stage survival is 65%, in stage III  survival rate is 50% and in stage IV less than 10% . This difference in survival indicates the importance of detecting cancer at an early stage of the disease.
3. Colorectal cancer is very accessible for diagnosis and therefore falls within the cancers that are easy to detect and prevent. An early diagnosis is important because, as we said, the success of treatment, in the first place, depends on the stage of the disease at the time of its discovery.

        Generally accepted view is that the majority (about 2/3) of colon cancer is formed from previous adenoma which in most cases does not give any symptoms. Duration of this transition from benign to malignant lesions  is between 10 to 35 years. This phenomenon is known as the adenoma - carcinoma sequence. Most adenomas doesn't cause any troubles and is accidentally discoverd with some of the screening methods. A large adenomas, however, can cause bleeding that usually is not visible to the naked-eye. The larger the adenoma is, there is the higher probability  for its transformation into the colorectal cancer. But, do not all adenomas become malignant. About 35% of us have adenomas in the colon. Detection and treatment of these adenomas primarily prevents the occurrence of cancer, as well as it helps to detect cancer in an early stage when it is curable.


Stage I - Cancer is located in mucosa (the most superficial part of the intestinal wall)
Stage II - Cancer has spread to the muscle layer of the colon wall 
Stage III - Cancer has spread to lymph nodes
Stage IV - Cancer has spread to other organs. 

                                                        Signs & Symptoms>>>

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