Colorectal cancer is the nation’s No. 2 cancer killer. Despite of the health risk of the disease and years of public efforts to make colon screening as widespread as tests for breast and prostate cancer, yet about half of the people who should potentially do these lifesaving checks still miss them.

Although CRC test can save so many lives, WHY so many people over 50 ignore doctors recommendations and don’t do colon cancer test to catch it in time?

Reasons for this can be different and seems like if an at-home test kits were delivered directly into mailboxes without a need in a doctor’s appointment, many people willingly would have done the test.

Colonoscopy is still a dreadful test that gets the most attention. However, the same test can be done by using a cheap, old-fashioned stool test works.

Recently California health care giant Kaiser Permanente started mailing those tests to patients to do a colon check and not surprisingly the screening rates jumped above the national average.

Another program that stresses stool-tests is the Veterans Affairs health system. Now specialists are looking to find a new ways to encourage even more people to get screened for a colon cancer.

If only early signs of trouble are spotted in time many trouble and misery can be prevented, not just treated.

As Dr. T.R. Levin, Kaiser Permanente’s colorectal cancer screening chief in Northern California says: “By overselling and overpromising colonoscopies, we’ve put up barriers for people” to get any type of screening.

Health care authorities recommend to everyone starting at age 50 to get screened for colorectal cancer.

However, according to the U.S. data only 55 percent do the test. Although this way better better than a decade ago, screening rates hovered below 30 percent, and both new cases and deaths have dropped as a result this is still simply not enough.

The sad fact is that regular colon checks can help identify and remove precancerous growths called polyps before the cancer has time to form in nearly 150,000 people diagnosed with colorectal cancer each year. . . about third of them die.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says proper screening could eliminate many new cases of this disease.

Colonoscopy is well known test where doctors use a long, flexible tube to visually inspect the colon. The National Institutes of Health reported that today about 80% of all screening are done by Colonoscopy.

The stool test, price about $20, is considered as effective if properly used once a year and typically handed over by a doctor, performed at home and then mailed to a lab.

But the use in this test has dropped as colonoscopies took center stage.

Many doctors urge doing colonoscopies as “one-stop shopping: patient is get screened and can get treated with one intervention,” as explains NIH panel member Dr. Lawrence Friedman from Harvard Medical School and Tufts University.

Although the test doesn’t hurts, only requires a day of bowel-cleansing preparation the price can exceed $1,000 but the good thing is that colonoscopies allow removal of polyps on sight.

If no problems are found, they’re only required once a decade. This test is recommended also as a next step when the stool test or other screenings identify a possible problem.

Sigmoidoscopy is another screening option while only the lower colon is examined. There is a new virtual colonoscopy test, a new X-ray exam offered in only limited places.

The NIH panel fulfilled that people have to pick the screening option that fits best to their own needs and comfort. At the same time NIH urge removal of financial barriers in both: out-of-pocket test costs and admission to ordinary health giver for advice and pros’ and con’s of each option.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center reported that racial disparities in colon cancer are widening and , suggested unequal improvements in access to the screening.

It turns out that in early 1990, African-Americans were 60% more likely than white to be diagnosed with late-stage colorectal cancer and the number had doubled by 2004.

The NIH panel also pointed to Kaiser Permanente’s ability to track down people due for screening and pull them in without waiting on them to show up in a doctor’s office.

In 2005 Kaiser learned that only about 40% of those who needs a colon check have gotten one. Although, the health maintenance organization to ease on those who prefer colonoscopy and sigmoidoscopy already paid for tests, and still they mailed out stool kits in hopes of catching people wary of invasive testing. Those who didn’t return were contacted by phone.

The screening rates in last year rose up to 75% and many people are grateful they did the test. One of them is Bob Cach, 56, of Livermore, California. Here’s what Bob said about that first mailed test:  “It’s kind of like doing your own science experiment at home.”

When this year’s kit identified a problem in Cach’s colon and a follow-up colonoscopy removed still benign polyp, he felt more than grateful it was caught.

So, once again — if you’re over 50 or have a family history of colon cancer, you should speak with your physician about taking the required test.

IMPORTANT: This relatively simple test takes a minimal amount of time and may help save your life!