You might not need a colonoscopy to be screened for colon cancer. A less-invasive alternative still offers reliable results.

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A simulation of a colonoscopy.
CSIRO
▼ In the United States, screening for colorectal cancer is usually unpleasant. A patient’s preparation begins with a liquid diet, laxatives, and the uncomfortable knowledge of where the colonoscopy camera is going to go.
But there’s another, effective way to screen for colorectal cancer: fecal immunochemical tests, or FITs, which detect blood in stool (an early sign of cancer). The tests can accurately identify cancer, according to a review and  meta-analysispublished in theAnnals of Internal Medicine.
If the FIT comes back negative, the patient is in the clear until their next annual test. If it comes back positive, only then would they have a colonoscopy, says study author Thomas Imperiale, researcher at the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research. “If the comparison is to do a colonoscopy on everyone, you can greatly reduce the use of colonoscopy by doing a FIT,” he says. “As long as it still enables you to detect most of those cancers.”
The latest study builds on a 2014  reviewof FIT performance. “At that time, there were fewer studies available,” Imperiale says. His team’s analysis looked at 31 studies which included a total of over 120,000 patients. They found that the tests had a moderate to high sensitivity for cancer, meaning they identified cancer when it was present, and had a low rate of false positives.
Different studies included in the meta-analysis had different thresholds for flagging a positive tests, which impacted the amount of cancers detected. When the test considered 20 micrograms per gram of blood in the sample as a positive, it identified three out of four cancers, with a low false positive rate, Imperiale says. But when the threshold was lowered to 10 micrograms per gram, the sensitivity goes up. “You can take the sensitivity up to identify 9 out of 10 cancers.” However, that generates more false positives.
The analysis showed that though a single FIT can identify cancer, it has a low sensitivity for abnormal growths, called advanced adenomas, which are considered precursors to colorectal cancer. This differs from a colonoscopy, which allows physicians to visualize everything from benign to cancerous growths.
But James Allison, emeritus professor at the University of California, San Francisco and emeritus investigator at Kaiser Permanente, isn’t worried. He says these adenomas grow very slowly, and only around 6 percent  annuallywill actually become cancerous. Because FITs are intended to be used annually, a patient with a negative result would ideally be tested repeatedly, increasing their likelihood of detecting an adenoma.  (▪ ▪ ▪)

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PSA, Public Sharing Announcement:
"ColoGuard" (FIT) has been successful for many years and has spun-off 2nd-gen products.
Simply check Amazon for 'colorectal test' and find many starting at US$9.69

Or walk into your local pharmacy...

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Rhett Bassard 27-2-2019 03:21 PM
PSA, Public Sharing Announcement:
"ColoGuard" (FIT) has been successful for many years and has spun ...

If the Mayo Clinic says so...
Is colon cleansing a good way to eliminate toxins from your body?