While the prevalence of colon cancer is growing among young people, nearly 80 percent of them know little about precancerous polyps, a survey released yesterday by the Hope Foundation for Cancer Care found.
The survey, conducted from Feb. 1 to Feb. 14 among office workers aged between 22 and 49, found that about 20 percent of respondents had never heard of precancerous colon polyps, which are abnormal growths in the lining of the colon.
Even those who said they knew what a polyp was did not have an accurate knowledge of them, with 36 percent of those respondents believing all intestinal polyps are benign and 35 percent attributing such tissue growth to hemorrhoids, the poll found.
“Moreover, 12 percent of them mistakenly equated precancerous polyps with colon cancer and 5 percent were under the misconception that young people do not develop polyps,” foundation chief executive Lai Gi-ming (賴基銘) told a news conference in Taipei.
Lai said one grave concern was the respondents’ low awareness of the importance of regular screening tests, as evidenced by the fact that nearly 77 percent have never had a fecal occult blood test, a non-invasive, painless test that can reduce the mortality rate for colorectal cancer.
Only 14 percent of respondents had had a colonoscopy, Lai added.
“Given that 6.8 percent of those polled have suffered from colon polyps, it is estimated that nearly 710,000 young adults in the country are at risk of developing such abnormal tissue growth,” he said.
Chia Shu-li (賈淑麗), an official with the Health Promotion Administration’s Cancer Prevention and Control Division, said of the 1.25 million Taiwanese who received government-funded fecal occult blood tests last year, 36,000 were found to have precancerous polyps and 2,500 were diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
“It is worth noting that about 60 percent of people diagnosed with colon cancer in recent years were only at stage one or two, while in the past, more than half of such patients were already in the terminal stages when their cancer was caught,” Chia said.
The foundation’s survey collected 1,102 valid responses.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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