Colorectal Cancer Screening (PDQ®)–Health Professional Version

Changes to This Summary (12/19/2018)

The PDQ cancer information summaries are reviewed regularly and updated as new information becomes available. This section describes the latest changes made to this summary as of the date above.

Evidence of Benefit

Added text to state that one study found that programmatic sensitivity of immunochemical fecal occult blood test increased from 66.0% with a positivity threshold of 30 µg/g to 79.3% with a threshold of 10 µg/g; correspondingly, programmatic specificity decreased from 94.7% using a 30 µg/g threshold to 87.0% using a 10 µg/g threshold (cited Selby et al. as reference 33). Also added that reducing the threshold from 20 µg/g would detect 3% more cancer cases and would require 23% more colonoscopies.

This summary is written and maintained by the PDQ Screening and Prevention Editorial Board, which is editorially independent of NCI. The summary reflects an independent review of the literature and does not represent a policy statement of NCI or NIH. More information about summary policies and the role of the PDQ Editorial Boards in maintaining the PDQ summaries can be found on the About This PDQ Summary and PDQ® - NCI's Comprehensive Cancer Database pages.

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