When the polyp has been nipped, it is gone. If you have a colon with no polyps (left) in it, you should be safe from colon cancer for at least a decade (how long polyps take to develop from mutation into a tumour).
- what if the presence of polyps is not all bad? i.e. maybe they keep the immune system in a tumor-responsive state, or they locally deplete nutrients that would otherwise feed other pre-cancerous cells?
Possible reasons I thought of:
- cancer cells metastasize/spread much earlier than we previously thought (https://www.statnews.com/2016/12/14/cancer-cells-spread-meta...)
- what if the presence of polyps is not all bad? i.e. maybe they keep the immune system in a tumor-responsive state, or they locally deplete nutrients that would otherwise feed other pre-cancerous cells?