By: John Kariuki
The Founder and Managing Director of Texas Cancer Center Dr. Catherine Nyongesa has taken a moment to offer us a free advisory – the importance of early cancer screening.
Dr. Nyongesa puts it this way:
“Early detection of cancer greatly increases the chances for successful treatment. The 2 components of early detection of cancer are early diagnosis and screening. Early diagnosis focuses on detecting symptomatic patients as early as possible, while screening consists of testing healthy individuals to identify those having cancers before any symptoms appear.
Early diagnosis
Early diagnosis programmes aim at reducing the proportion of patients who are diagnosed at a late stage. They have 2 main components:
- increased awareness of first signs of cancer, among physicians, nurses and other health care providers as well as among the general public; and
- Improved accessibility and affordability of diagnosis and treatment services, and improved referral from first to secondary and tertiary levels of care.
Early diagnosis is particularly relevant to cancers of the breast, cervix, mouth, larynx, colon and rectum, and skin.
Screening
Screening refers to the use of simple tests across a healthy population to identify those individuals who have a disease, but do not yet have symptoms. Examples include breast cancer screening using mammography or clinical breast exam, and cervical cancer screening using pap smears, human papillomavirus test or visual inspection with acetic acid.
Screening programmes should be undertaken only when their effectiveness has been demonstrated, when resources (personnel, equipment, etc.) are sufficient to cover nearly all of the target group, when facilities exist for confirming diagnoses and for treatment and follow-up of those with abnormal results, and when prevalence of the disease is high enough to justify the effort and costs of screening.”
