As a family physician practicing at the Wawa Medical Centre, 225 kilometres north of Sault Ste.

Marie, Dr. Mike Cotterill noticed that many of his patients were being diagnosed with colon cancer and dying from the disease.

So in 2001, he and other physicians in the community of 3,500 decided to do something to help diagnose their patients with colon cancer at an earlier, less serious stage.

For years, there had been colonoscopy screening in Wawa for patients with symptoms of colon cancer or a family history of the disease.

Without any additional funding, the physicians at the medical centre extended colonoscopy screening to all patients aged 50-75.

The patients can be referred directly by either their family physicians or nurse practitioners. The goal of the program is to screen the entire eligible population within 10 years, which is the recommended interval between screening colonoscopies for people at average risk.

In all, 382 patients who wouldn’t normally receive colonoscopy screening have undergone the procedure over the past seven years. Another 1,000 patients who have a family history or symptoms of colon cancer have also received colonoscopies.

That means that 44 per cent of the eligible population in the Wawa district have received colonoscopies since 2001, which is much higher than either the provincial or national average.

Cotterill spoke about the program at the Northern Health Research Conference in North Bay May 30.

“We found three people with cancer who had no symptoms at all. If we hadn’t had this program, they would have had no reason to be scoped,” he said.

“They would have gone on for months, probably a number of years, before they showed up with a problem. Often by then it’s too late.”

While performing colonoscopies, physicians are also able to remove polyps, or small tissue growths, from the bowel wall using forceps or a wire loop. This procedure has been proven to prevent colon cancer, he said.

“Polyps are little lumps, and they start as being non-cancerous. Most of them don’t become cancerous, but some do. We think that all colon cancers come from these polyps, so if we take them all out, in theory, nobody should go on to get colon cancer for 10 years after.”

Cotterill said he’s happy that the province introduced its own colon cancer screening program last year.

But because the program uses fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) as its initial screening process, it’s not as effective as it could be, he said.

“FOBT misses more cancers than colonoscopies do, and it has more false positives. If you have blood in your stool, it doesn’t mean you have cancer,” he said.

“Some people have said that it’s not the FOBT that reduces colon cancer deaths. It’s because so many people go on to have colonoscopies and have polyps removed.”