Treatment
Treatment for FAP depends on the genotype. Most individuals with the APC mutation will develop colon cancer by the age of 40. Therefore, prophylactic surgery is generally recommended before the age of 25. There are several surgical options that involve the removal of either the colon or both the colon and rectum. The decision to remove the rectum depends on the number of polyps in the rectum as well as the family history. If the rectum has few polyps, the colon is removed and the small bowel (ileum) is connected to the rectum (ileorectal anastomosis). If the rectum is involved then the colon and rectum are removed and a patient may require an ileostomy (permanent stoma where stool goes into a bag on the abdomen) or have an ileo-anal pouch reconstruction.
Various medications are being investigated for slowing malignant degeneration of polyps, most prominently the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). The NSAIDS have been shown to significantly decrease the number of polyps but do not usually alter management since there are still too many polyps to be followed and treated endoscopically.
Read more about this topic: Familial Adenomatous Polyposis
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I am glad you agree with me as to the treatment of the mining riots. We shall crush out the lawbreakers if the courts and juries do not fail.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts.... The question “Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?” should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)