Such
attitudes, says Jill Cockburn, PhD, of the Cancer Council NSW in Australia,
reflect an “ostrich approach to health and illness management.”
Recognizing the early warning signs of colorectal cancers is important
because the chances of successful treatment are greater if they are detected
early.
The telephone survey of 1,332 people in New South Wales, Australia, by
Cockburn and colleagues, published in the July-August issue of the American
Journal of Health Behavior, found that about two out of three respondents
could name at least one symptom of cancer of the colon or rectum. But about
a quarter of those surveyed could not name even one symptom of colorectal
cancer.
Women, people with more education, and those who believed in the benefits
of early detection were more likely to know about symptoms.
The interviewees were then asked if they had experienced blood in a bowel
movement, the primary symptom of colorectal cancer. About 306 respondents
said they had experienced this, 182 (14 percent) within the previous five
years.
Of this latter group, 46 percent saw a doctor within a
week about their concern and another 14 percent waited as long as a month.
Nine percent
waited three months or longer and 32 percent did not seek medical advice
at all. The people who did not see a doctor most often explained their
actions by saying that they thought it wasn’t serious or that it
would clear up by itself.
Cockburn says she worries that general information presented in the media
is not enough to move people to take action even once they are aware of
their own risk.
“More focused campaigns are warranted to recommend a specific behavior
when symptoms are first noticed,” she says. This might include
more detailed information and advice distributed through the mass media
and
more emphasis on doctors offering information tailored to their patients,
she notes.
“Any educational campaign should be based on principles of behavior
change that target the underlying perceptions found in this study, namely
that bleeding from the rectum is not cause for concern,” she says.
Cockburn’s work was produced as part of the work
of the Cancer Council NSW, Centre for Health Research and Psycho-Oncology.
