DAVIE, Fla. – Each year about 150,000 Americans are diagnosed with colorectal cancer and more than 50,000 will die from the disease.
While age is a key factor, that’s not always the case.
Tammy Hirsh was 47 years old when her dad was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2022.
Before he died from the disease, he urged her to get screened.
“So, within a few months I did get my colonoscopy at Cleveland Clinic Weston, and I woke up to ‘you have rectal cancer’ and I told the doctor, ‘you have the wrong patient this can’t be possible,”' Hirsh said.
Dr. Dana Sands, a colorectal surgeon with Cleveland Clinic Weston said excluding skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in both men and women in the U.S.
“I think a lot of people think colon cancer is a disease that only affects men and I think a lot of people think colon cancer is a disease that only affects the elderly,” Sands said.
The rate of people being diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer each year has dropped overall since the mid-1980s, mainly because more people are getting screened and changing their lifestyle-related risk factors.
But this downward trend is mostly in older adults.
In people younger than 55 years of age, rates have been increasing by one-to-two percent a year since the mid-1990s.
“With the growing number of colon cancers in young people often times, if somebody comes with a symptom of rectal bleeding, everybody will say ‘oh don’t worry about that it’s just your hemorrhoids’ and they attribute the bleeding symptoms to their hemorrhoids, but in reality, it can be something much more sinister,”' Sands said.
Although the cancer did metastasize to her lungs, Hirsh believes early diagnosis and treatment have helped her return to a normal life.
“I’m basically pretty much to where I was at when this all began. I have been out of chemo for about seven months now, I’m basically cancer-free today and I’m able to see my 50th birthday this year because of the great hands I was in with Dr. Sands and Cleveland Clinic,” Hirsh said.
Overall, the lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is about 1 in 23 for men and 1 in 25 for women, however, each person’s risk might be higher or lower than this, depending on their risk factors for colorectal cancer.