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Starting Monday, millions of people who have avoided colon cancer screening can get a new home test that's noninvasive and doesn't require the icky preparation most other methods do. The test is the first to look for cancer-related DNA in stool. But deciding whether to get it is a more complex choice than ads for "the breakthrough test ... that's as easy as going to the bathroom" make it seem. On one hand, the test could greatly boost screening for a deadly disease that too few people get checked for now. On the other hand, it could lure people away...

DOVER, Del., A Delaware man's lawsuit alleges he awoke from anesthesia after a colonoscopy procedure to find he had been dressed in a pair of pink panties. The New Castle County Superior Court lawsuit, filed by attorney Gary Nitsche on behalf of Andrew Walls, 32, said Walls was employed by the Delaware Surgery Center in Dover when he underwent a colonoscopy procedure at the facility in 2012. Nitsche said his client was put under anesthesia during the procedure and he awoke after surgery to find someone had dressed him in pink women's underwear. "When the plaintiff initially presented for his...

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the first screening test for colon cancer that uses patients' DNA to help spot potentially deadly tumors and growths. The Cologuard test from Exact Sciences detects irregular mutations in stool samples that can be an early warning sign of cancer. Patients who test positive for the mutations should undergo a colonoscopy to confirm the results. Doctors have long used stool tests to look for hidden blood that can be a warning sign of tumors and precancerous polyps. But company studies of Cologuard showed that it was more accurate at detecting cancerous tumors...

Did Belarusian programmers supply some of the Obamacare network software? Inquiring minds want to know..... Programmers linked to the government of Belarus claim to have supplied some of the code used in the Obamacare website. Valery Tsepkalo, of the Belarus government backed High Technology Park in Minsk, claimed (on Voice of Russia radio) that the HHS "is one of our clients" and that "we are helping Obama complete his insurance reform..... Our programmers wrote the program that appears on the monitors in all hospitals and all insurance companies- they will see the full profile of the given patient". MORE at...

If you ever wanted to know what it felt like to crawl through a colon you can now find out after a 40-foot-long model of the human part was created – just don’t wear your shoes. The giant replica is currently on show in Jacksonville, Florida, at the Ostomy Associations of America’s biannual meeting. The colon is used to transfer waste out of the human system and the model, which is four-foot-tall, allows visitors to get up close and personal to their insides. Barbara Heidenreich was excited about the exhibit, she wrote on Twitter: ‘Yesterday there was a giant colon...

I just had my first glass of GoLytly! YUMM YUMM!

In Florida this afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden reminded them that thanks to President Obama, they could now get colonoscopies without a co-pay. During his speech, Biden reminded the audience that some of their Republican friends would distort Obama’s record on Medicare. “Everyone knows, everyone in this room knows that President Obama has increased the benefits available to people on Medicare by the action he took,” Biden said. “You are now able to go get a wellness exam, and guys, if you conclude you need a colonoscopy because of the feeling you had or you need a breast health examination,...

A local colon cancer survivor says she's living proof Dental assistant Tonya Brinson is a colon cancer survivor. Brinson was diagnosed in 2007 when she was only 41 and when her son was a young boy. She called a specialist when she started bleeding. “Within a week of that time, he set me up with a colonoscopy, and thank God he did that," Brinson said. "He saved my life.” A study in The New England Journal of Medicine presented hard evidence that colonoscopies prevent death. The test gives a doctor the ability to see the colon and remove any suspicious...

BOSTON (CBS) – The national health care reform law requires insurance companies to cover 100% of the cost of screening tests for dozens of potentially deadly diseases. But thousands of patients are finding out the hard way that free doesn’t always mean free. When Jim Dungee had his first colonoscopy, doctors found several polyps, which are a precursor to colon cancer. “Therefore, I had to come back in three years,” he said. The three year mark was back in December. Knowing the test could save his life, Jim did not hesitate to make an appointment. He even called his insurance...

ObamaCare is supposed to force insurers and Medicare to provide preventive services at no charge to the patient. Colonoscopy is considered a preventive service, thus there should be no out-of-pocket costs for getting one. Turns out, though, that ObamaCare is having some unintended consequences: (T)here’s a wrinkle in the highly touted benefit. If doctors find and remove a polyp, which can be cancerous, some private insurers and Medicare hit the patient with a surprise: charges that could run several hundred dollars.

Colonoscopies are gross and scary enough on their own without cockroaches being introduced into the mix – but the photograph that you see before you is of exactly that: a cockroach in someone’s colon, a live one no less. A 52-year-old woman with a history of depression was referred by her primary physician for colorectal cancer screening. She had no family history of colorectal cancer and a review of systems was positive for abdominal bloating. Bowel preparation was done using 4 L of polyethylene glycol the evening prior to screening colonoscopy. The procedure was uncomplicated with no gross mucosal pathology,...

On 23 April I had a routine colonoscopy, and found out that I had cancer. I knew then I’d have to write this column once I knew the outcome. I had 25 days of chemotherapy, simultaneous with radiation therapy, followed by surgery on 11 August. The pathology reports came back yesterday. They were, as my surgeon said, ‘the best possible, given the circumstances.” They were clean margins and clean lymph nodes. The margins are the areas all around the site of the surgery. The lymph nodes are where cancer usually spreads first, from its original site. In laymen’s terms, I...

Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers have discovered that routine blood tests can provide an early warning for colorectal cancer. Anemia, a common blood disorder characterized by low hemoglobin levels, has long been associated with those suffering from colorectal cancer. It doesn't happen suddenly, however - and Tel Aviv University researchers say they have found that gradually decreasing hemoglobin levels can actually indicate a potential for colon cancer years in advance. Graduate student Inbal Goldshtein, who works with Dr. Gabriel Chodick and Dr. Varda Shalev of TAU's School of Public Health and Maccabi Healthcare Services' Department of Medical Informatics, says that...

The sub-head is even worse: "Katie Couric Will Be There Wednesday as He Undergoes the Procedure." Maybe she is going to do a "live remote" from inside the colon walls. She's pretty short. But, we wonder, why not stay and do the Evening News live from inside the colon? It certainly would give the Tiffany Network a new perspective. They might finally find Jimmy Hoffa or their lost dignity. more here

Yesterday's post looked at the issues relevant to health-care reform raised by the fact of the president's recent annual physical, starting with the act of getting an annual physical exam in the first place. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has long recommended that rather than a lock-step, one-size-fits-all approach, periodic health screening be conducted according to individualized factors. "This year's examination focused on evidence-based screening prevention and primary care, targeted to the president as an individual and his occupation," the exam's final report stated. And indeed, the president, who is 48, was too young to warrant much in...

WASHINGTON — Nearly half the people who need potentially lifesaving checks for the nation’s second-highest cause of cancer deaths - colorectal cancer - miss them, despite years of public efforts to make colon screening as widespread as tests for breast and prostate cancer. The dreaded colonoscopy may get the most attention but a cheap, at-home stool test works, too - and when California health care provider Kaiser Permanente started mailing those test kits to patients due for a colon check, its screening rates jumped well above the national average.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A powerful House committee chairman with a central role in President Barack Obama's global warming and health care legislation has been hospitalized. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., was not feeling well Tuesday and was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for "routine testing," spokeswoman Karen Lightfoot said Wednesday.

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald. Dave Barry's Colonoscopy Journal: > > I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis . Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, "HE'S...

An easily overlooked type of abnormality in the colon is the most likely type to turn cancerous, and is more common in this country than previously thought, researchers are reporting. The findings come from a study of colonoscopy, in which a camera-tipped tube is used to examine the lining of the intestine. Generally, doctors search for polyps, abnormal growths that stick out from the lining and can turn into cancer. But another type of growth is much more dangerous, and harder to see because it is flat or depressed and similar in color to healthy tissue. Japanese researchers became concerned...

Dave Barry: A journey into my colon -- and yours OK. You turned 50. You know you're supposed to get a colonoscopy. But you haven't. Here are your reasons: 1. You've been busy. 2. You don't have a history of cancer in your family. 3. You haven't noticed any problems. 4. You don't want a doctor to stick a tube 17,000 feet up your butt. Let's examine these reasons one at a time. No, wait, let's not. Because you and I both know that the only real reason is No. 4. This is natural. The idea of having another human,...