Every year in Spain, more than 30,000 new cases of colon cancer are diagnosed. It is actually the most common malignant tumor in the country. However, when detected early, almost 90% of cases are curable.
For that reason, MD Anderson Cancer Center Madrid, in collaboration with the Ministry of the Presidency, has held an informative conference, “Preventing colon cancer. An efficient strategy in the workplace”, aimed at promoting the prevention of this kind of cancer among specialists in Occupational Medicine.
At the conference, Doctors Jose Luis Calleja and Alberto Herreros de Tejada, of MD Anderson Cancer Center Madrid’s Digestive Service, explained the main guidelines for the screening of patients who must undergo preventive tests in relation to their risk factors, such as genetic predisposition or family history, among others.
The diagnosis of colon cancer in its initial stages, when the symptoms have not yet become apparent, increases the possibilities of using surgery for the purpose of curing the disease and is associated with greater survival rates. During the presentation, emphasis was put on the need to carry out screening for colon cancer among members of the population with a high risk of developing the disease (those with a personal or family history of cancer) and among medium risk patients over 50.