Remembering Eartha Kitt: What Her Colon Cancer Story Can Teach Us About Screening

What was reported

Eartha Kitt died on Christmas Day, 2008, at 81. The Associated Press reported that the cause was colon cancer, according to a family spokesman. NPR marked the same news that evening.

Her career ran six decades. She danced with the Katherine Dunham troupe, was cast by Orson Welles in his Faust in Paris, recorded "Santa Baby" in 1954, and played Catwoman on the 1960s Batman series. Welles called her the most exciting woman alive.

That is the record. What follows is not about her care, which was never public. It is about the disease named in that one sentence, and why it is the one major cancer that screening can often stop before it exists.

A cancer that announces itself early — to a camera

Colorectal cancer begins in the colon or the rectum, the last stretch of the digestive tract.

NCI says these cancers often begin as a polyp, a small growth on the bowel's inner lining. Most polyps stay harmless. A minority turn cancerous, usually over years.

That slow window is the whole basis of screening. A colonoscopy that finds a polyp does not just detect a problem early. The polyp comes out during the same procedure, and the cancer that might have grown from it never happens.

Very few cancers work this way. For most, screening can only find disease sooner. Here it can prevent it.

The tests, and what each one asks

There is no single right test. There is a right test for a given person, and the best one is the one that actually gets done.

Stool-based tests look for something the bowel has shed. A fecal immunochemical test, or FIT, detects hidden blood. A DNA stool test checks stool cells for genetic changes. These are done at home. The Associated Press reports that stool-based options are typically yearly, and any positive result leads to a colonoscopy.

Colonoscopy examines the whole colon with a flexible camera under sedation, removing polyps as it goes. AP reports it may be repeated every ten years as long as nothing was found. Sigmoidoscopy looks at the rectum and lower colon only. Virtual colonoscopy, also called CT colonography, builds an image of the bowel from a scan. AP also notes a newer blood test for adults 45 or older.

Our guide to colorectal cancer screening sets the options side by side, and our page on colonoscopy covers what the day itself involves.

When to start, and when not to wait

AP reports that medical guidelines put the start of routine screening at 45 for the average person. Diagnoses in adults under 50 have been rising since the early 2000s, so for some people even 45 arrives late.

Start the conversation earlier if any of these apply:

• A parent, sibling, or child was diagnosed with colorectal cancer or with advanced polyps, particularly before 60.
• You have inflammatory bowel disease — ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease — affecting the colon.
• Your family carries a known inherited syndrome. NCI names Lynch syndrome, also called hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer, as one such condition.

And separately from any schedule, book an appointment now, at any age, for:

• Blood in the stool, or bleeding from the rectum.
• A change in bowel habit lasting more than a few days: looser stools, constipation, or stools that have narrowed.
• Cramping or abdominal pain that keeps returning.
• Weight loss you did not intend, or fatigue that rest does not lift.

Screening is for people with no symptoms. Symptoms need a diagnostic test, which is a different conversation. Our page on symptoms worth reporting explains the distinction.

Age is a reason to keep screening, not to stop

Kitt was 81. Screening decisions in later life are genuinely different, and they turn on overall health and life expectancy rather than the birthday alone.

Someone in their late seventies in good health may still gain from screening, because a polyp removed today cannot become a cancer in ten years. Someone with serious other illness may gain nothing, because the procedure carries risk now and the benefit arrives much later. That is a conversation, not a rule.

What this does not mean

• Nothing is known publicly about when Eartha Kitt was diagnosed, at what stage, or whether screening would have changed anything. This page does not suggest it would have.
• Being fit and working does not exclude bowel cancer. She performed into her eighties.
• SEER, the federal cancer surveillance program, records, for people diagnosed in the years 2016 through 2022, five-year relative survival of 91.3 percent when colorectal cancer is still confined to the bowel wall, 75.2 percent once it has reached nearby lymph nodes, and 16.9 percent when it has spread to distant organs. Overall it is 65.4 percent. These are averages across large groups diagnosed years ago. They describe populations, not readers.
• A normal colonoscopy is not permanent protection. The interval exists because new polyps form.
• No test is perfect. Stool tests miss some cancers, and colonoscopy has a small risk of bleeding or perforation. That is why the choice is discussed rather than assigned.

Sources

• Associated Press via PBS NewsHour: Singer, performer Eartha Kitt dies at 81
• NPR: Singer and actress Eartha Kitt dies
• NCI PDQ: Colorectal Cancer Screening (Patient Version)
• NCI PDQ: Colon Cancer Treatment (Health Professional Version)
• Associated Press: what to know about colorectal cancer at any age
• NCI SEER Cancer Stat Facts: Colorectal Cancer

How this article was prepared

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

Cancer Explained is published by the National Cancer Information Foundation. It is not medical advice and does not suggest a test or treatment.

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