The Colon Club

My brother recently had a colonoscopy and a polyp was found that was too large to be removed during the procedure. The doctor took a bit of it to be biopsied and informed him that it was cancerous. He will be having surgery to remove it. They told him that it looked like the cancer was only in the polyp and had not spread although they won't be certain until after his surgery. Everything I have read says that polyps are either benign or pre-cancer. They were very specific that this polyp was cancerous. He is scheduled for surgery next week. What does this mean-does he have colon cancer or not? I am confused!

If there are cancer cells, it’s cancer. But what you describe, cancer cells contained in a polyp (in the mucosa of the colon), is stage 0 cancer, which means the treatment will likely be simple removal of the polyp, and that’s that. If testing shows that cancer invaded the submucosa, that would be stage 1 colon cancer (still very treatable). So: If it stays at stage zero, it is a simple process and once done, it’s over (other than implications for future testing frequency). You should then celebrate because you dodged a very bad situation by getting it really, really early. A huge win versus what would have happened it it had time to advance. Good luck!

Yes, it sounds like cancer, but it seems that they caught it in the early stage so that’s good.

During the surgery to remove the polyp, the surgeon will probably remove a section of his bowel including the lymph nodes and they will be tested for cancer. This is probably what he meant when he said that they won’t be certain about spread until after surgery. Usually polyps are removed during a colonoscopy but it has grown too large to remove in this way, and has turned cancerous.

I had a 3cm malignant tumor in my sigmoid colon surgically removed 11 years ago with spread to my lymph nodes. I underwent six months of chemo and have been cancer free since then.

I am quite sure that your brother will have a good prognosis due to finding it early.

Thanks to both of you for your comments. They have moved his surgery to the end of the month. He is trying to change the date because he "wants it out as soon as possible".