'Good to Go'

“I don’t do a lot of screenings because, in the majority of my colonoscopies, I’ve been referred to remove a polyp,” states Dr. Adarsh M. Thaker, an interventional endoscopist at UCLA Health Burbank Primary & Specialty Care. “We remove large polyps and even early colon cancers endoscopically, to prevent them from either turning into worse cancer or in order to avoid surgery. We put so much attention on polyps and colonoscopies because a polyp is a precancerous lesion. That means if you leave it be, in five or ten years, a significant number of polyps turn into colon cancer. In general, any polyp that has a biopsy that does not show cancer is still worth an endoscopist taking a look at it. We might be able to remove it in a low-risk, same-day procedure. In fact, our surgeons often send their patients to one of us to remove the polyps before they will consider doing surgery. I like the procedural aspect of telling a patient I was able to remove it all and that they are good to go.”