Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Screening for colorectal cancer: flexible sigmoidoscopy and faecal occult blood immunochemical testing. Which test is superior?
  1. Guido Castiglione
  1. Correspondence to Dr Guido Castiglione, ISPO–Cancer Prevention and Research Institute, Department of Screening – Digestive Endoscopy, Villa delle Rose, Via Cosimo il Vecchio 2, 50139 Florence, Italy; g.castiglione{at}ispo.toscana.it

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

This issue of Gut reports a very interesting article by Hol and colleagues1 (see page 62) which compares the results of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of a 3-day guaiac-based faecal occult blood test (gFOBT), a 1-day immunochemical faecal occult blood test (FIT), and flexible sigmoidoscopy (SIG) for the screening of colorectal cancer (CRC). This is the first study to compare the three tests contemporarily by an RCT as far compliance and detection rates (DRs) of tests are concerned. For this reason the paper is positioned at a crucial point in the discussion on CRC screening.

Several RCTs have been successfully concluded demonstrating the efficacy of gFOBT screening in reducing CRC mortality (range, 13–33%).2 Considering the limited impact of the gFOBT on mortality reduction, FITs have been introduced and several studies3 have demonstrated that FITs are more accurate than the gFOBT.

Moreover, in the last two decades SIG has been proposed as a screening test for CRC based on the assumption that distal colonic significant neoplasia may be predictive of possible proximal neoplasia.4 5 6 In the existing literature SIG DRs proved to be consistently higher than FIT or gFOBT DRs as far as single rank of screening was considered.7 Participation in SIG screening is usually low, at about 30%,5 6 7 with the notable exception …

View Full Text

Footnotes

  • Competing interests None.

  • Provenance and Peer review Not commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.

Linked Articles