Dr Aaron Poh

In terms of how the stage affects the surgery, I think what most people are concerned about would be whether it turns out that you need open surgery and what people often don’t want -- whether you would need to end up with a stoma. If the stage is high and the tumour is locally invasive, meaning it’s stuck down to the abdominal wall or small intestine, then that often than not would be an open surgery. It means that you will have a much longer incision down the middle of your abdomen. That’s one way the stage affects the surgery.

Yes. I think most of us here, especially if you have read up a bit on Google, are aware of this thing called IBS -- Irritable Bowel Syndrome. IBS essentially is an issue of mortality of the colon, where you get some irregular contractions. And it’s actually not just in the colon, it is an entity that covers the entire gut -- meaning your stomach, your small intestine, and your colon. The problem with IBS is that it mimics change in bowel habits and that in turn is a symptom of colon cancer.

Hi, AshleyFor a normal risk individual with no family history of colon cancer, the MOH guidelines suggest age 50 and beyond. My advice varies slightly as I have seen individuals as young as their late 30s and early 40s with cancer, and as such, I suggest doing a colonoscopy when one nears 45 years old. For an individual with family history of colon cancer, particularly if it is first degree relatives such as parents, then the first colonoscopy screening should be done 10 years prior to the age of first diagnosis of cancer in the index case.

Big question. Colon surgeries nowadays are almost always performed as keyhole surgeries, so you get about 3-4 small incisions anywhere between 1 to 1. 5cm on the abdomen. Usually accompanying that is another incision about 7 to 8cm which is much shorter than if you were to do a conventional operation. And through this we take out the colon -- the segment of the colon with cancer together with a margin, you can’t cut right beside the tumour, you need to leave a margin usually about 5cm on both ends of the tumour. We take that out and then join both ends of the colon back together.

There are some surgical conditions that may result in a tummy ache, but we will be focusing on these 4 conditions: Gallstones, Gastritis and Gastric ulcer, Swollen Piles and Painful Hernia.

I think rather than jumping the gun, whether they should go for investigation, the very least you should do is to seek a consultation with preferably a specialist. The reason for that is IBS is not a condition you have to live with forever. Or rather I should say you have to potentially live with it forever, but it’s something that there are medications that can potentially treat it. I think first and foremost when you come and see a doctor, we take a detailed history and decide whether it sounds like IBS in the first place.

The truth of the matter is the recovery period is fairly short. You get it done in the day, you go home on the same day, on that day you might feel a little bit bloated because you blow a lot of gas inside during the colonoscopy to distend out the colon so we can see it well. You’ll find yourself farting a lot on that particular day. Usually, by the evening, your tummy will be fine, and you’d have recovered from the sedation. During a colonoscopy, we usually give some sedation, that makes you a little bit sleepy.

The scopes undergo thorough cleaning in a scope cleaning machine with a pre-programmed cleaning protocol.

In that particular context, where a person has a stomachache and goes to the toilet but there’s nothing, I think IBS is a very common culprit. Among other symptoms, other than what I mentioned -- there are two types of IBS. You could have the constipation-predominant type, or you could have the diarrhoea-predominant type, which means that you get a lot of constipation or a lot of diarrhoea. And then you have a third group, which doesn’t have any of these, but have the symptoms of what you described. They feel like they need to go, but they go to the toilet and nothing comes out.

It’s perfectly possible to even go swimming with a stoma. What you do need to do is to cover up the stoma with gauze and put a waterproof dressing on top of it. And then you can go swimming. The intestines will fuse to the skin, we actually stitch it down. So once that is fused, we get essentially a waterproof joint. And unfortunately, you can’t control how the motion comes out which is why you do need to put a dressing over it to prevent the faeces from coming out during the duration that you’re swimming. But by large, yes you can go swimming.