You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
Different seasons with decreased performance of immunochemical faecal occult blood tests in colorectal cancer screening
  1. Leo G M van Rossum1,
  2. Martijn G H van Oijen2
  1. 1Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and HTA, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  2. 2Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to Leo G M van Rossum, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and HTA (133), Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, P O Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen; l.vanrossum{at}ebh.umcn.nl

https://doi.org/10.1136/gut.2010.223412

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.

    In their paper, Grazzini et al described seasonal influences on the performance of an immunochemical faecal occult blood test (iFOBT) in colorectal cancer screening and concluded that the performance is 17% lower in the hot summer months than in winter.1 We wondered if this would also be true for other countries.

    In a previous study in the Netherlands we described lower positivity rates due to prolonged intervals between faecal sampling at home and delivery to the laboratory with the same iFOBT as that used by Grazzini et al.2 We analysed our data for testing in accordance …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Linked articles 226241

    • Competing interests None.

    • Ethics approval This study was conducted with the approval of the Dutch Health Council, the independent scientific advisory board of the Dutch Minister of Health.

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

    Linked Articles

    • PostScript
      Authors' response
      Grazia Grazzini Marco Zappa Leonardo Ventura Tiziana Rubeca Stephen P Halloran
      Gut 2010; 60 1304-1304 Published Online First: 06 Oct 2010. doi: 10.1136/gut.2010.226241