Tell me more about Inflammatory Bowel Disease and increased risk. What is the connection?
Chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, is a condition in which the colon is inflamed over a long period of time. If you have chronic inflammatory bowel disease, your risk of developing colorectal cancer is increased. You should start being screened by colonoscopy 8 to 12 years after you were first diagnosed with IBD and testing should be repeated frequently (every 1 to 2 years). Often the first sign that cancer may be developing is called dysplasia. Dysplasia is a term that refers to cells that are no longer normal but they are not cancer yet. Inflammatory bowel disease is different than irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which does not carry an increased risk for colorectal cancer.
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