Could a new study that suggests colonoscopy is less effective than expected thwart efforts in the U.S. to get more people screened for colorectal cancer?
Medical associations and physicians are weighing in on the subject, noting that they are worried that the results from the randomized NordICC trial, published earlier this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, are being interpreted in a way that may discourage people from undergoing screening.
The study, led by Michael Bretthauer, MD, PhD, of the University of Oslo in Norway, showed that individuals invited to undergo screening colonoscopy had a reduced risk of colorectal cancer compared with those who did not undergo screening, although at a lower rate than researchers had expected. Furthermore, they found no significant difference in colorectal cancer-related mortality between the two groups.
“We’ve all been trying to boost colorectal cancer screening, and what we don’t want is to derail that effort or have our patients think that screening is not effective and forego it,” Aasma Shaukat, MD, MPH, of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told MedPage Today. “We should mitigate any impression that this should deter, demotivate, or discourage people from undergoing colorectal cancer screening.”
Shaukat, who also served as a reviewer for the study, suggested that the results are not being interpreted deeply enough to understand the study’s limitations and what it means in the context of other available evidence on the topic that “overwhelmingly supports that colorectal cancer screening is effective in reducing the incidence of colon cancer and reducing deaths, and a lot of it is much more relevant because it comes from U.S. populations.”
George J. Chang, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, pointed out that “this is not data saying nobody should get a colonoscopy,” adding that…