Colon cancer is nowadays a well known disease because it affects many individuals every year. Colon cancer seems to be one of the main causes of death among cancer patients all over the world and even if many campaigns have been done with the purpose to raise the level of informing about this disease, still people are diagnosed in the most advanced stages of colon cancer and usually the treatment can not work anymore.

How did colon cancer became such a reality all over the world and what year was colon cancer first discovered and be two of the many questions we will want to ask after hearing about this disease because despite of the medical progress and the innovations made in this area, still only 8 to 10 percent of the people diagnosed with colon cancer stage four are cured.


Anyway, colon cancer is not a new disease, it has been around for many centuries. The Chinese used different herbs treat the disease nearly 6,000 years ago according to a research made in 2007. Anyway, many doctors consider 1913 to be the year when colon cancer began to be understood as the disease that it is today. So, this will be the simple answer to the question what year was colon cancer first discovered.

Anyway, long before that colon cancer was known and affected many people, but of course the disease was not studied as it is today. And still today, despite all the researches made regarding this disease, there are things that are not known and can not be explained.


For example, doctors do not agree about the causes of colon cancer. There are certain risk factors that are believed to favor the development of cancer, but a doctor can not tell you precisely what determined the cancer forming. And still there is not a single treatment that can be used in cancer cure.

Colon cancer treatment regards often surgery and when the cancer is very advanced chemotherapy, but through chemo there are administrated many different drugs, in different combinations, and sometimes they can work, while in other cases, the cancer brings an individual’s death. However, for other types of cancers there are not either single treatments to cure them, but still colon cancer is the third main cause of death in all cancer patients.


Being careful at symptoms and avoiding risk factors is what doctors usually recommend. So, we can say that the most important two elements about colon cancer development are prevention and early diagnosis. As soon discovered, colon cancer is easier to treat and the survival rates are higher, and so the life expectancy. So, colon cancer is the most preventable type of cancer, but also a very difficult to cure one once it spreads.