In the fight against colon cancer, the No. 1 goal is not making the diagnosis and treating the disease. It is prevention.
Although it is one of the easiest types of cancer to prevent through routine screening, over 50,000 people die from colon cancer every year in the U.S., making it the second-leading cause of cancer death in men and the third most common in women.
More than half of those deaths could be prevented by a relatively simple, painless screening examination called a colonoscopy â and yet, one in every three Americans over the age of 50 chooses to never undergo any type of colorectal cancer screening test.