The Prevalence of Bowel Cancer and Other Disorders
Bowel cancer affects some 35,000 people a year in the UK, and despite being one of the easiest cancers to cure, of these people only half will still be living up to 5 years after diagnosis. The main reason for this is that very often diagnosis is left too late. The other is that, in comparison with other cancers such as breast, bowel cancer has not received the attention in terms of translational research .
Bowel problems by their very nature are embarrassing and usually kept quiet, despite causing an enormous amount of distress to the sufferer. Far too many people 'suffer in silence' the symptoms of, for example, faecal incontinence, a large proportion of whom are women who have suffered complications either during or some time after childbirth. The social and psychological effects on these individuals can be devastating.
In the UK alone, around 100,000 people each year, from new born babies to the elderly will need to be fitted with a colostomy (bag) as a result of surgery for bowel cancer, another bowel disease or disorder of function.
Read more about this topic: Bowel & Cancer Research
Famous quotes containing the words prevalence, bowel, cancer and/or disorders:
“The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)
“I who was a house full of bowel movement,
I who was a defaced altar,
I who wanted to crawl toward God
could not move nor eat bread.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“I wish more and more that health were studied half as much as disease is. Why, with all the endowment of research against cancer is no study made of those who are free from cancer? Why not inquire what foods they eat, what habits of body and mind they cultivate? And why never study animals in health and natural surroundings? why always sickened and in an environment of strangeness and artificiality?”
—Sarah N. Cleghorn (1976–1959)
“It no longer makes sense to speak of “feeding problems” or “sleep problems” or “negative behavior” is if they were distinct categories, but to speak of “problems of development” and to search for the meaning of feeding and sleep disturbances or behavior disorders in the developmental phase which has produced them.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)