By Kate Fisher
Buffalo, NY – Roswell Park Cancer Institute is launching a program giving people age 50 and older an opportunity to have a free colorectal test. Doctors say the test can detect the earliest stages of the disease. Dr. Ashwani Rajput, an attending surgeon at Roswell Park, said early detection allows for more effective treatments.
"This is a disease that is not only preventable, it's treatable, and in the year 2003 it is curable, so that is what the real important message is -- screening," Dr. Rajput said. "With appropriate screening we can prevent the cancer from forming because cancer arises out of something called a polyp and if you can get the polyp out at the time of your screening, then you won't get the cancer."
Roswell Park is distributing 4,000 free testing kits through Eckerd Pharmacies in Erie and Niagara Counties.
About 58,000 people will die this year from colorectal cancer.