It should be combined with a sigmoidoscope exam every five years, one of those doctors-office exams where they tell you that " this may feel a little uncomfortable " as they peer into the lower third of your colon.
12.
Also, a 1997 survey in the Archives of Family Medicine showed that a majority of primary care physicians failed to follow more than one-third of the federal guidelines for the proper cleaning of sigmoidoscopes, used for the detection of colon cancer.
13.
Men may accept the indignity of digital rectal exams and prostate-specific antigen tests, and women reluctantly submit to pap smears and mammograms, but most still balk at the colonoscopies, flexible sigmoidoscopes and double-contrast barium enemas used to detect cancers of the colon and rectum.
