Word: colonics
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President Reagan first learned that he might be susceptible to developing polyps in May 1984, when doctors discovered a growth in his intestine during a routine physical examination. The discovery was made with a device called a sigmoidoscope, a tube containing a light source. Inserted into the colon, it enables doctors to examine the walls of the lower part of the intestine visually...
...around the suspect polyp and passed an electric current through the wire which cauterized the polyp, freeing it from the intestinal wall. Held to the end of the colonoscope by suction, the polyp was withdrawn. Using the same instrument, the doctors visually scanned the rest of the President's colon. It was during this examination that the larger polyp was discovered in the cecum, at the juncture of the large and small intestines...
...colonoscopic inspection or a barium enema. Said Dr. Stephen Hanauer, a gastroenterologist at the University of Chicago: "The bottom line was, if he had either blood in his stool or a polyp last year, then our way of dealing with that is to recommend examination of the entire colon for polyps." The President's doctors stood fast, explaining that they had decided against a scan of the entire bowel after the discovery of the first polyp because it was in fact merely a "pseudopolyp," more an inflammation than an actual growth. In following the course they did, insisted Dr. Edward...
Still, knowing what he knows now, Cattau admitted, he will recommend that the President undergo more frequent colon examinations. It is now clear, he said, that the President is prone to polyps. In fact, the tendency may run in the President's family. Oller disclosed that the President's brother Neil, 76, a retired California ad executive, was recently diagnosed as having cancer of the colon. Said Oller: "I would recommend that Reagan have a repeat colonoscopy in six months...
Surgery to slice out two feet of his colon had apparently removed the malignancy from Reagan's bowel, and Dr. Rosenberg quickly explained that the President had a better-than-50% chance to live out his normal life. But the medical experts could not rule out the possibility that cancerous cells had escaped into the bloodstream and, like a microscopic time bomb, seeded themselves in another organ. If cancer should recur, the President could face a long and debilitating course of therapy that would make the heavy burden of the presidency more onerous...