One of my primary charges as a proctologist is to help patients manage the most common diseases of the lower GI tract, anus, and buttocks. Of these, anal cancer is the most formidable, an aggressive form of cancer that can claim lives if it isn’t caught early on.

But treating anal cancer and preventing anal cancer are two different things, and the latter is always preferable to the former. That’s why I wholeheartedly endorse media articles such as this one, which help to sound the alarm on HPV and its connection to cancer, offering strong words of support for one widely available vaccine:

The vaccine’s low uptake among preteens and adolescents belies its universally acknowledged effectiveness in preventing the most common sexually transmitted infections linked to the human papillomavirus. Those infections can cause a half-dozen cancers, including more than 90 percent of anal and cervical cancers; 70 percent of vaginal, vulvar and oropharyngeal, or middle throat, cancers; and 60 percent of penile cancers.

HPV is one of the few truly obvious causes of cancer, and we should treat it with the same caution that we give sun exposure for melanoma and cigarette smoke for lung cancer.

If you’d like to get the very latest information on the prevention and treatment of anal cancer and colorectal cancer in LA, please contact my offices here today.