Healthy is Lifestyle

Around 5,000 people in Austria, each year suffered from bowel cancer, the mortality rate nearly 50 percent. A colonoscopy screening in Austria with age of 50 years and regardless of gender is recommended. A recent study by the Austrian Society for Gastroenterology and Hepatology, led by Monika Ferlitsch of the Medical University of Vienna, comes to the conclusion that this screening in men starting at age 45 is advisable.

Under the direction of Monika Ferlitsch of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine III at Vienna General Hospital were in the context of the "Certificate of Quality Colorectal Cancer Screening" of the Austrian Society for Gastroenterology and Hepatology (ÖGGH) and the Federation of Austrian Social Insurance Total 44, 350 screening colonoscopies evaluated.

The result: For men between 50 and 55 years, the risk for precursors and early forms of colon cancer, called adenomas, twice as high as age-matched women. Furthermore, according to the scientists reported that the adenoma risk in 45 - to 50-year-old men is as high as that in older women by ten years.

Suitable to show the current analysis by Statistics Austria, the men in Austria twice as likely to fall ill and die from cancer than women. Ferlitsch: "All these aspects suggest that the current allocation for screening colonoscopy at age men should be questioned, in order to reduce the colorectal cancer incidence and mortality." In Austria, the screening colonoscopy starting at age 50 in the provision of social services anchored.

On the website of ÖGGH (www.oeggh.at / certificate) there is an easy-to-use guide for certified colonoscopy in Austria. On General Hospital itself does not care colonoscopies are done.

The study has now been published in the latest edition of the prestigious American journal JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association).