Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Dr. LaPook’s Colonoscopy: Screening Tests Save Lives

Last night, President Obama made a pitch for preventive care in his address to a joint session of Congress on health care:

“And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies – because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.”

As a doctor who has held the hands of patients dying from totally preventable illnesses, I couldn’t agree more. The largest number of deaths in the United States are caused by two preventable causes – tobacco smoking and
high blood pressure – killing an estimated 467,000 and 395,000 people respectively in 2005. The list goes on and on, including obesity, physical inactivity, and poor diet.

When I was working in the emergency room as a medical resident, it was heartbreaking to see a patient with poor routine medical care roll into the emergency room with a devastating stroke that could have easily been averted with regular office visits and blood pressure medication – both relatively inexpensive compared to the cost of caring for the stricken patient.

We’re not preventing enough deaths by the types of cancer screening tests mentioned by President Obama. One reason is the technology is still not good enough. We need to develop better screening tests that pick up problems early but don’t lead to an unacceptable number of unnecessary biopsies, procedures, and further tests. And
not enough patients are screened. Only about about 60 percent of women get mammograms and about 50 percent of men and women get routine colonoscopies.

Lack of insurance coverage is certainly a big reason why some patients don’t undergo screening. Another reason is patient fear and misunderstanding. In order to educate the public about the risks of colon cancer and the benefits of screening exams, Katie Couric underwent a colonoscopy on national television in March, 2000. Three years later, researchers at the University of Michigan found that colonoscopy rates jumped by 20 percent across the country following Katie’s procedure, calling the rise the
“Katie Couric Effect.”

It’s almost 10 years later and we’re still not screening enough patients. Although the death rate from colon cancer has dropped in recent years – likely mostly because of screening efforts – colorectal cancer still strikes almost 150,000 Americans every year and kills about 50,000.

As a gastroenterologist, I have seen patients’ lives saved by the removal of polyps and early cancers found by colonoscopy. I have also taken care of patients whose colon cancers were found too late to save them. Over the years, I must have heard every excuse for ducking a colonoscopy. The top four (and my answers):

  • I have no symptoms (most colon cancers start small and have no symptoms until they grow larger.)
  • I have no family history of colon cancer (that’s true in about 70 percent of patients with colon cancer.)
  • I’m afraid it will hurt (that’s why we use sedation and, if needed, anesthesia.)
  • I can’t do the prep (we’ll figure out a way to clean out your colon that you can tolerate.
  • And even if you have a tough night, it sure beats chemotherapy.)For this week’s CBS Doc Dot Com, I follow Katie’s lead and undergo a colonoscopy with cameras rolling in an attempt to remind people that a screening colonoscopy can save your life. I had the benefit of a house call the night before by my office nurse, Debbie Fitzpatrick, who held the video camera and offered advice and encouragement as I had a taste of my own medicine: the colon cleanout solution. The colonoscopy was performed expertly by Dr. Mark B. Pochapin, director of The Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

    For more information about the Jay Monahan Center,click here.

  • For more information about screening for colon cancer, click here.To watch my colonoscopy, click below:


    Watch CBSNews Videos Online

  • Is AIDS The Forgotten Epidemic? Where Do McCain and Obama Stand On HIV/AIDS?

    Photo Credit: CBS News

    Photo Credit: CBS News

    I have a friend who works with Katie Couric and he sent me this announcement today. You may be interested in tuning in tonight to hear more specifics about McCain and Obama’s views on HIV/AIDS in America. As for me, I’ll be attending a lecture about our two party system at the National Archives. Thank goodness for TiVo.

    Tonight on the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” Medical Contributor Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on where each presidential candidate stands on AIDS in America.  There is a new infection every 9.5 minutes and an AIDS related death every 33 minutes with 1.2 million Americans who carry the virus.  Yet HIV / AIDS is America’s “forgotten epidemic,” as the nation spends almost $10 billion annually to fight AIDS abroad, but less than 10 percent of that here at home.  Dr. Gupta will explore how Senators McCain and Obama intend to stop the epidemic and how they plan to care for those living with this deadly disease.  For all the candidates answers, tune in tonight at 6:30 p.m. EST.

    This is part of an ongoing weekly series of in-depth reports called “Where They Stand”  CBS News will continue to examine how each candidate proposes to solve America’s most pressing problems, from the economy to foreign policy to immigration to health care to education to energy to the environment to the country’s infrastructure to homeland security, among others.

    Latest Interviews

    IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

    It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

    Read more »

    How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

    I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

    Read more »

    See all interviews »

    Latest Cartoon

    See all cartoons »

    Latest Book Reviews

    Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

    I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

    Read more »

    The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

    When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

    Read more »

    Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

    I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

    Read more »

    See all book reviews »

    Commented - Most Popular Articles