Preventive Care

This document discusses different types of anesthesia for procedures, colon cancer screening recommendations, various screening tests, and colon polyps. Local anesthesia blocks nerve impulses in a targeted area while general anesthesia puts the patient in an unconscious state monitored by an anesthesiologist. Screening tests can find precancerous polyps so they can be removed before developing into cancer, and also detect cancer early when treatment works best. Tests that can find both polyps and cancer include flexible sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy, double-contrast barium enema and CT colonography while fecal occult blood, immunochemical, and stool DNA tests mainly detect cancer. Colon polyps are small cell growths that can be harmless but pose a higher risk forRead less