If you start searching facts about colon cancer you will see that everywhere doctors say that prevention is the most important thing, and when colon cancer is formed it has to be diagnosed very soon after the development for it to be curable, or at least for it to have the best chances of getting treated. And the reality is that statistics show that when colon cancer is discovered in the last stage, it can be cured only for 8 to 10 percent of those who got it.

So, if you already know the main risk factors of colon cancer, you should wonder what are the symptoms of colon cancer and how can colon cancer forming be detected. Although it may seem really easy to enumerate some thing that those who have colon cancer felt before their diagnosis, doing this is not easy at all and happens mostly because not all the symptoms are the same for every patient and not every patient has symptoms. Many of the people that have colon cancer have no symptoms at all.


When symptoms appear, they will probably vary, depending on the cancer's size and location in the large intestine. After colon cancer spread, symptoms will include other elements depending on the place where the metastasis are created. The most common early symptom of colon cancer is the change of the bowel habits. You may notice that some days you have diarrhea while other constipation. The alternation between these two is also a colon cancer symptom. Also, serious abdominal pain can be felt by those who have developed colon cancer.


The presence of blood in the individual stool is a symptom that can not be ignored. While pain or diarrhea and constipation can be experienced in other disease, the presence of blood usually indicate a cancer forming. And it is also the most alarming of these symptoms.


When cancer grows and chemotherapy is administrated, other symptoms can be felt. For example, nausea, vomiting and hair loss. These side effects of chemotherapy are felt because the drugs administrated are very powerful and they affect both cancerous cells and healthy ones. In an advanced stage, colon cancer symptoms can and will include fatigue, weakness and a general decline of the health.

If you experience one of these symptoms make an appointment with your doctor as soon as possible. He will recommend you some tests to be able to make a diagnosis, but if he does not tell you to have a screening test, you can ask for one. On screening tests, doctors can see inside the individual’s body a check for any abnormal growths that were developed, he can take a biopsy sample and the cancer, if the case can be diagnosed.