Cancer of Rectum Is Preventable: Researchers

Chinese scientists have been the first in the world to prove, after 24 years of research, that the removal of polypi of the rectum is helpful to the prevention of the cancer of rectum.

The research report will be carried in the magazine "Common Epidemic Diseases in China" this month.

The finding is a result of joint efforts by a team of Chinese researchers, led by Professor Zheng Shu of the Tumor Research Institute of Zhejiang University in east China's Zhejiang Province.

The removal of the rectum polypi could lead to a decrease in the development of the rectum cancer by 40 percent, and a drop in the mortality rate caused by such cancer by 50 percent, according to another leading researcher, Liu Xiyong.

From 1977 to 1980, researchers made two enteroscopy examinations of more than 230,000 people aged over 30 in Haining City in Zhejiang Province. As a result, 4,077 people were found to have rectum polypi.

Two decades of monitoring the sufferers showed that the removal of polypi helped decrease the possibility of the cancer by 68.6 percent, and fatalities from cancer by 82.4 percent.

Of those who had the polypi removed, some 500 have suffered from cancer of the rectum in the past two decades, 229 cases less than the predicted figure, the report says.



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