Postponement of colon cancer screening due to covid-19
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Fotografia Rui Tato Marinho no jornal da Sic Noticias

Rui Tato Marinho, Professor at FMUL and Director of the Gastroenterology Service at Northern Lisbon University Hospital Centre was in SIC Notícias news, where he spoke about bowel cancer, one of the ones that affects the Portuguese the most.

Last Monday, the European month for the fight against bowel cancer started. Throughout this pandemic year, some consultations and examinations were postponed and the Professor reveals that, “it was possible to maintain about 80% of the consultations” via teleconsultation. Regarding the exams, “the reduction was 90 %” compared to last year.

"In 2019, the country had almost half a million colonoscopies and, last year, there were only 350,000 exams", which means, "there is a lot of ground to recover".

As bowel cancer is one of the main diseases that affects the Portuguese, Rui Tato Marinho defends the creation of a screening programme to overcome these delays in consultations and exams caused by covid-19. Every year, “10,000 people are detected with colon cancer”.

A screening that the Professor finds very useful, at this moment, is the "blood test in the faeces". This screening, “has not been widely accepted by the Portuguese, but at this stage, it may help to detect some cancers that sometimes manifest asymptomatically for several years”.

Rui Tato Marinho highlights some warning signs that everyone should pay attention to, such as loss of blood in the stools, lack of appetite, weight loss and diarrhoea. He states that, “it may be late when these symptoms appear”, so “we must think of a strategy to recover these tens of thousands of people who are on the waiting list” for screening or colonoscopy.

The pandemic has driven people away from hospitals, but the Professor asks everyone to have confidence in the National Health System, whether public or private, because “we are increasingly safe, and about 80% of health professionals have already been vaccinated”.