The confinement meant slowing down the growth of one of the most efficient programs that the Castilla-La Mancha health system has compared to its cost. It is about colon cancer screening, an initiative that emerged in the spring of 2016, and which had grown gradually during the years prior to COVID, reaching 35 percent of people who answered the call. “Really good participation”, in the words of the general director of Sescam Health Care, José Antonio Ballesteros, who explained that with the coronavirus, since 2020, “citizen participation plummeted”, for which a plan of recovery of participants in this screening.
Last year an awareness program began, which started before Christmas, along with a massive mailing of letters, including a letter from the president of the regional government, Emiliano García-Page, to the more than 500,000 Castilian-La Mancha who are included in the program, and that has meant reaching “42 percent participation”. A figure that drops a bit, to 37.54 percent, if one takes into account those samples that arrive perfectly at the laboratory. “Everything we are doing has been a success,” said Ballesteros, who recalled that the positivity rate, those samples that have presented blood in feces, is 6.8 percent, located in the average for this program internationally. .
In addition to disseminating the screening, Ballesteros emphasized a pilot project that is being developed in the towns of Talavera de la Reina, Cuenca and Hellín, where those citizens who have received the second invitation to participate in the program, the screening will be repeats every two years, has received the letter and also the kit to take the sample. More than a thousand shipments have been made in this pilot initiative that saves a consultation in primary care, where this kit is requested. The idea is to “extend this work model to the rest of the region in the coming weeks” and in March it could reach the Ciudad Real Management. In addition to the kit at home, this initiative entails the installation of containers in health centers where the sample can be deposited directly. The intention is to make this screening “accessible and without making an appointment” and that when the result is available, the doctor will contact the patient if he has tested positive.
378 lives
The colon cancer program in the province has shown its effectiveness, since in its first years of existence it has saved the lives of 378 people who had invasive cancer without their knowing it. This is the key, because the stool test allows asymptomatic citizens to know that they should undergo a colonoscopy and increase their life expectancy by detecting tumors before there are any symptoms or removing lesions before they become cancerous.
Of the 59,088 people in the province who have responded to the test in the first invitation and the 54,769 in the second, they have implied that 7,437 colonoscopies have been performed in the province, where 5,074 lesions have been discovered in the colon. These are adenomas, a tumor that is not cancerous, normally benign, and that is removed in the same test. Of those that had been removed, 1,336 were considered adenomas at high risk of becoming invasive cancer.
The data implies that the province of Ciudad Real accounts for approximately one third of the regional figures for the success of the program. Throughout the region there have been 14,810 adenomas discovered in colonoscopies, of which 3,927 were high risk and 1,097 lives have been saved with their participation.
Ballesteros recalled the importance of this data for the lives behind it, people who have made a gesture as simple as paying attention to the letter, getting the kit and taking a stool sample. “The kit is easy to use and the instructions are practical,” said Ballesteros, stating that the philosophy with this initiative should be the same as that of women in the region with breast cancer. “It is difficult to find women who refuse” the mammography that is offered and the objective is to achieve the rates that breast cancer has, where 70 percent participation has been exceeded for years, the final objective of participation that the Sescam for colon cancer screening, the disease diagnosed by former Brazilian soccer player Pelé.
