Dr. Ajaz Khan is the chief of medical oncology at City of Hope Chicago. He oversees the Illinois hospital’s staff of cancer care experts and has specialized in treating patients with breast and lung cancers. We talked to Dr. Khan about early detection and cancer treatment trends.
Which cancers do you most encourage early screening for?
The most common cancers we screen for are breast, colon, cervical, prostate and lung cancer. Let’s consider colon cancer. Right now, you’re looking at over 100,000 cases a year. And the number of young people being diagnosed is rising. A report came out last year predicting that 20% of colon cancer patients would be under 50.
The five-year survival rate if you catch colon cancer early, like a polyp or even stage-one cancer, is somewhere between 95% and 100%. Unfortunately, if it’s not caught early, the five-year survival rate for stage-four cancer is around 12%.
What’s the latest in early cancer screening technology?
What’s really changing the landscape right now is blood-based testing. When you look at colon cancer, colonoscopies are extremely good at early diagnosis. But they’re not available in every community and patients sometimes don’t want to have them done.
For the past three-and-a-half years, we’ve also had stool-based testing, but the next step right now is DNA technology that can detect cancers through blood tests. These tests are about 95% to 98% sensitive. It’s easy, relatively cheap, and more accessible since you don’t have to see a gastroenterologist.
You can just have a family physician order a blood test. We’re really championing this, as an effective, easy way at early detection. We’re also looking at microRNA tests, which are proving extremely sensitive at detecting cancers like colon and pancreatic. The next step in research is to evolve these blood-based tests to make them even more effective at detecting more cancers.
What cancer risk factors should patients be considering?
There are quite a few modifiable risk factors. Eating high amounts of animal protein and organ meat, a sedentary lifestyle, obesity, a BMI of greater than 30, heavy alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking.
If you have a family history of colon, breast, pancreatic, gallbladder or biliary tract [liver] cancers, you may have a high predisposition to developing one of those cancers. Right now, with no clinical risk factors, we begin screenings at age 45, but if a family member of yours had cancer, it’s 10 years before their age at the date of their diagnosis. So if they were diagnosed at 40, your screenings should begin at 30.
We champion early detection at City of Hope. Whenever I go out to speak to cancer survivors, I always tell them to make sure your family is getting screened early. Our mission is to eradicate cancer, and if we can catch it early, that’s the best way. It gives our patients the best chance at living long and cancer-free lives.
City of Hope
2520 Elisha Ave., Zion, IL
847-440-5662
cityofhope.org
