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Twenty patients in the study (3.1 percent) were diagnosed with a second colorectal cancer, including nine cancers detected within 18 months of initial cancer diagnosis. Advanced neoplastic polyps were also more common (15.5 percent) when the initial colonoscopy was delayed until 36 to 60 months after diagnosis compared with patients who had an initial colonoscopy within 18 months (6.9 percent). Patients with a prior history of adenomas were more likely to have advanced neoplastic polyps on follow-up. In addition, patients with advanced neoplastic polyps on the initial surveillance colonoscopy were frequently found to have advanced neoplasia on subsequent colonsocopies (81 percent).

"The best prevention we have against colorectal cancer is screening. All individuals over the age of 50 or those with a family history of the disease should be screened for this deadly disease," according to Charles Mel Wilcox, MD, Editor-in-Chief, Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and professor of medicine, University of Alabama, Birmingham. "This study provides further proof of the value of screenings and the lives that can be extended and saved."

Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths and affects men and women equally. An estimated 112,340 new cases of colon cancer and an estimated 41,420 cases of rectal cancer will be diagnosed this year, according to the National Cancer Institute. More than 52,000 Americans will die from colorectal cancer in 2007. Colorectal cancer rates have been decreasing steadily over the past several decades due to an increase in awareness and screening.