CT Colonography Screening for Colorectal Cancer Health

June is Men’s Health Awareness Month. If you exclude skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in both men and women in the United States.(1) At Invision Sally Jobe we provide CT colonography screening.

CT colonography — or virtual colonoscopy — is a completely safe diagnostic medical test using low-dose-radiation CT scanning to obtain images of the colon (the large intestine). For CT colonography, sophisticated computer software combines the CT images to form a three-dimensional image of the colon. The images are similar to what is seen during a conventional colonoscopy.

All methods of screening for colon cancer require a cleansing program for the colon. With CT colonography, a camera is not pushed through the colon as with a conventional colonoscopy. The colon does not need to be filled with liquid barium as it does with a barium enema. So, a CT colonography tends to be significantly faster and more comfortable for patients than other common screening methods.

Conventional (fiber optic) colonoscopies have been considered the “gold standard” for colorectal cancer screening. Many studies have been conducted to compare the accuracy of virtual to conventional colonoscopies in finding tumors and polyps in the colon. Study results show that CT colonography is as accurate as or even exceeds conventional colonoscopies at finding tumors and polyps of significant size.

An additional benefit of CT colonography is that the radiologist can also see other abdominal structures in the CT scan images, helping identify other health problems when examining the images.

You can get more information on the procedure here and schedule you CT colonograpy screening here: https://www.invisionsallyjobe.com/services/colonography-screening/.

1. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/colon-rectal-cancer/about/key-statistics.html