State gets grant to fight colorectal cancer

In the last two years, Dr. Julian Lopez has become accustomed to patients either delaying colonoscopies or saying that if the procedure is really needed, they'll travel to another state to have it done.

It is what happens, the gastroenterologist said, when people lose confidence in a health care system.

"That's what the hepatitis outbreak at his (Dr. Dipak Desai's) clinics has done," he said. "People just don't trust what is going on in this kind of medicine in Las Vegas. They'll tell me that. Nevadans have always been reluctant to get the test done but now it's much worse."

"The shame of it is," he said, "is that the death rate from colon cancer is going to be worse when it doesn't have to be."

As worried as Lopez is by behavior that he believes is putting Nevadans at greater risk than ever for colon cancer, he found a glimmer of hope in a Tuesday announcement by the Nevada State Health Division -- the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded a $600,000 grant to state public health officials in an effort to educate the public about colorectal cancer.

Only 55.7 percent of Nevadans over 50 years old have ever had a colonoscopy or sigmoidoscopy (similar to a colonoscopy), giving Nevada the sixth-worst colon cancer-screening rate in the nation. Even worse is this sobering fact: Nevada women have the worst colon cancer-screening rate in the nation at 51.8 percent.

Statistics also show that the state's death rate from colorectal cancer is nearly 18 per 100,000 people, while the national average is at 17.

The statistics on screenings and deaths do not factor in behavior by Nevadans since the hepatitis outbreak at the Desai Clinics.

Like Lopez, Rosemary West of the Nevada Cancer Institute thinks that more recent studies will find that even fewer Nevadans have had screenings done. The anecdotal evidence just keeps growing, she said.

"You hear the concern about that hepatitis outbreak and fear of colonoscopies all the time in Las Vegas," she said.

Public health officials have determined that nine cases of hepatitis C have been scientifically linked to Desai clinics, where many people went to get screened for colon cancer. And officials now say there is a high probability that 106 other cases developed from treatment there.

Investigators determined that the virus was contracted through the dangerous reuse of syringes and vials in injecting anesthesia.

"To educate our citizens about the need for colonoscopies we have to deal with what happened in Las Vegas head on," Lopez said. "We have to let people know in a public health education campaign that what happened at those clinics isn't done at other clinics and hospitals in Nevada. We have to have credible doctors come forward and let people know how we do the right thing. We can't talk around what happened or try to hide it. People will just tune us out then."

Martha Framsted, a spokeswoman for the state's health division, said Tuesday that officials haven't decided what kind of campaign to use in an effort to get more people screened for colon cancer.

She also said health officials did not use the hepatitis outbreak at Desai's clinics to bolster's the state's case for a grant.

West notes that the Nevada Cancer Institute is working with the School of Community Health Sciences at the University of Nevada to get more people in Reno screened for colon cancers. More than $300,000 was awarded to the effort by the National Institutes of Health.

What is being done in Northern Nevada -- including helping seniors with paperwork and to set up transportation -- will probably be done in Las Vegas as well, West said.

"We have to do much more education in this area," Lopez said of colorectal cancer, the second leading cancer killer in the United States. "We have to get people to understand a simple fact: 60 percent of colorectal deaths can be avoided if everyone aged 50 or older has regular screening tests."