U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT - Meet Cologuard: the Col
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Posted On: 02/05/2015 12:09:18 AM
U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT - Meet Cologuard: the Colon Cancer Test You Can Take at Home How a new test may help prevent a deadly disease.
Colonoscopies are recommended every decade for at-risk people or those ages 50 and up, but if you take the Cologuard test instead – recommended every three years for 50- to 85-year-olds at average risk for colon cancer – then you don’t need a colonoscopy unless Cologuard catches something suspicious. Medicare covers Cologuard every three years, and importantly, it's the first test in history that the FDA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services both approved on the same day, to accelerate availability to patients, says David Ahlquist, a professor of medicine and a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
“If it were broadly applied across the population and was used regularly within a program, a test like this could do what PAP has done for cervical cancer, making it a rare disease,” Ahlquist says. Cervical cancer used to be the No. 2 cancer killer in women, but ever since women began getting regular PAP screenings in the 1950s, rates of U.S. cervical cancer have fallen dramatically. "We’re very excited by that potential scenario.”
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-...ke-at-home
Colonoscopies are recommended every decade for at-risk people or those ages 50 and up, but if you take the Cologuard test instead – recommended every three years for 50- to 85-year-olds at average risk for colon cancer – then you don’t need a colonoscopy unless Cologuard catches something suspicious. Medicare covers Cologuard every three years, and importantly, it's the first test in history that the FDA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services both approved on the same day, to accelerate availability to patients, says David Ahlquist, a professor of medicine and a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
“If it were broadly applied across the population and was used regularly within a program, a test like this could do what PAP has done for cervical cancer, making it a rare disease,” Ahlquist says. Cervical cancer used to be the No. 2 cancer killer in women, but ever since women began getting regular PAP screenings in the 1950s, rates of U.S. cervical cancer have fallen dramatically. "We’re very excited by that potential scenario.”
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-...ke-at-home
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