Hi Jodie. Welcome to the forum.

I am not a doctor and I have no medical qualifications.

Were you given any other information at the time of colonoscopy? I recall that after my colonoscopy I was given a written report which stated the findings and also said what biopsies had been taken.  If you have such a report then it would be useful to share with us what it says about biopsies; otherwise I can only speculate.

During a biopsy, it is normal to remove any polyps found. Most polyps are benign, but a small number of polyps may either be cancerous or pre-cancerous.  Clearing out all polyps is therefore a great way of stopping a possible bowel cancer in its tracks, or preventing its development at some later stage. In fact, some doctors think that everybody should have a colonoscopy in their 40s or 50s to clear out all polyps and thus prevent many future cases of colon cancer. Perhaps your 19 biopsies are polyps? 

Regarding your FIT reading, it is high enough to trigger a colonoscopy. I don't know if there is any significance in the reading itself, but I do know that only a small number of patients with a high FIT reading turn out to have colon cancer (less than 5%), so a positive FIT result is not an automatic cancer diagnosis.

If I can end on an optimistic note.  No colon cancer was found, and presumably any polyps which might have caused cancer in the future have been removed.  If it turns out that one of your biopsies turns out to be cancerous or pre-cancerous, then you might need more colonoscopies and maybe other treatment in the future. This is going to be an annoyance, but it's not going to kill you.

Hi,

Thank you so much for your reply.

I was given a sheet after my colonoscopy stating that they did not find anything pathologically unusual. Speaking to the nurse after my procedure, he did not state if the biopsies were polyps and only said that they just took 19 samples to cover the whole area the colonoscopy covered.

Here was the locations they took the biopsies in:

Terminal ileum x4 biopsies

Proximal ascending x4 biopsies

Mid transverse x4 biopsies

Proximal sigmoid x4 biopsies

Rectum x3 biopsies

thank you for shedding some light on the FIT test too! :)

After looking on some forums on here I understand that to be a high number of biopsies, but if nothing was found, would they perhaps be looking for other gastrointestinal issues such as chrones disease or ulcerative colitis?

thank you again for your reply

I think if they'd found polyps they'd have put them in the report.  If there are no polyps then that's good news and makes cancer much less likely.  So my best guess is that the biopsies are for form's sake and they're simply covering all the bases. 

I'll remind you I'm not a doctor and this is simply my guess as a lay-person.

I am wondering if you are still waiting on your biopsy results, I had 14 biopsies taken, found mild patchy inflammation in some areas of my colon. 

My GP suspected IBD so I guess the results will either confirm this or not. 

Its been over 3 weeks since my procedure. 

I hope you are doing well and keeping yourself distracted :) 

Kind regards, 

Jemma