Patient: Doctor, you said I have intestinal polyp, what does it mean when it says “tubular adenoma with high grade intraepithelial neoplasia” on the report form? Doctor: This is a kind of polyp, which is a precancerous lesion and has the risk of cancer, so we suggest you come to the hospital for regular review. Patient: Ah! Pre-cancerous lesion! So my polyp will become cancer? Doctor: …… For today’s talk about cancer, patients will be afraid of the name “precancerous lesion”, and even a layer of psychological shadow will be cast over them. I think I’m about to get cancer, what if I get cancer, I have an old man and a young woman, why would God do this to me …… To know if your polyps will turn into cancer, first of all, we need to understand the classification of polyps. There are two types of colon polyps: tumor polyps and non-tumor polyps. As the name implies, tumor polyp is likely to become cancerous, also called adenomatous polyp; non-tumor polyp is not malignant to cancer. Since it is not easy to distinguish the two under colonoscopy, colonoscopists often use polyps as the initial diagnosis, and then send the polyps to the pathology department for further classification by the pathologist after removal. Pathologically, adenomatous polyps include: tubular adenoma, villous adenoma, tubular choroidal adenoma, familial adenomatous polyposis and serrated adenoma. Non-neoplastic polyps include: hyperplastic polyps, inflammatory polyps, and malignant polyps. It can be seen that the patient at the beginning of the article has adenomatous polyps, and one of the most important characteristics of these polyps is that they are precancerous, which means that they may become cancerous. Then the question arises, will this kind of adenoma definitely become cancerous? How likely is it to become cancerous? In order to explain the relationship between precancerous lesions and cancer, some oncologists have made a vivid explanation: precancerous lesions are eggs and cancer is a chick. An egg will become a chick only under the right incubation conditions. Without incubation conditions, eggs will never become chicks; even with incubation conditions, eggs may not always hatch into chicks. Similarly, adenoma will become cancer only under certain incubation conditions. So what is the condition that turns adenoma into cancer? Simply put, this condition is bad diet and living habits, plus genetic factors. As colorectal cancer is a disease of the poor and the rich, with the high quality of life in big cities, people tend to form the following bad dietary and living habits, which, as we know, are the incubation conditions that turn adenoma into cancer: 1. high fat diet all year round 2. sedentary and less exercise 3. lack of dietary fiber intake 4. irregular bowel movement or habitual constipation 5. smoking and alcoholism In order to prevent the occurrence of colorectal cancer, genetic factors such as family history, we have no way to change. What we can change are the above-mentioned poor dietary and living habits. Of course, people who have the above risk factors and genetic factors of colorectal cancer do not need to panic, because you can develop the good habit of regular medical checkups to achieve early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment. So there is no need to be alarmed when you have colorectal polyps, on the one hand, some polyps are not carcinogenic; on the other hand, even adenomatous polyps, which are precancerous lesions, often take 10-15 years to transform from polyps to cancer, you still have a chance to change it, that is, you have a chance to “not let the egg become a chicken”. Finally, I would like to send you the sixteen words of cancer prevention policy proposed by the World Health Organization: “reasonable diet, moderate exercise, stop smoking and limit alcohol, and psychological balance”.