Hello,

Does anyone know how often one should have a CEA Blood Test if diagnosed with an early colon cancer(pre Jpouch surgery), such as Stage 0.

Also, how many biopsies should be taken during a pouchoscopy?

Thanks!

Keith

Cant help you with the cancer question but my daughter gets a yearly scope and biopsies of her retained rectal cuff. She has cuffitis, which is under control with pentasa, but because of that she needs to be scoped yearly. So I would imagine that you would definetly need scoping and biopsies. Dont know how many they take though.

These sort of clinical standards are revised all the time, so your oncologist would be the one to ask about appropriate post operative surveillance. This would be tailored to your individual intraoperative findings (such as staging and primary tumor type) and other treatment received, such as chemo and/or radiation.

My understanding is that the CEA is not a very good surveillance tool, due to frequent false positives and negatives, so is only done in conjuction with other monitoring aids.

Also, there is a presumption of a more complete cure when the entire colon is removed (as opposed to someone who has a colon resection/partial colectomy for colorectal cancer). This does not mean no monitoring though. I would think that annual or perhaps every six months at first scoping would be sufficient, with reducing frequency when biopsies are consistently negative. This is particularly true if you do not have issues such as pouchitis.

Jan

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Jan Dollar,

Keith, Ditto Jan's comments (she's the best!) and add location / original site of tumor. I was stage I. Oncologist and surgeon agreed that if site was closer to rectal cuff the treatment, followup/biopsies would be different. I had Step I 10/2005 and have had three CEA's.