Published 25 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3934
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3934

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Screening for colorectal cancer saves money by avoiding the need for costly new chemotherapy drugs

Susan Mayor

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Most colorectal cancer screening strategies would save healthcare systems money by picking up cases at an earlier stage and preventing the need for costly chemotherapeutic drugs, which have recently become available, a study has found.

The United States used a microsimulation model to assess whether the increasing use of new, costly drugs would affect the treatment savings that could be achieved by colorectal cancer screening (J Natl Cancer Inst 2009 doi:10.1093/jnci/djp319). The MISCAN-Colon model—the colorectal version of a model previously used to evaluate screening programmes for breast, cervical, and prostate cancer—simulates the biographies for a large population of individuals from birth to death in the absence of screening, and then with the changes that would occur if a screening programme were implemented.

The study modelled the impact of five colorectal screening strategies recommended by the American Cancer Society: annual guaiac faecal occult blood testing (FOBT), annual immunochemical . . . [Full text of this article]


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Money Is Not The Cure (1)
Dr. Herbert H. Nehrlich
bmj.com, 26 Sep 2009 [Full text]
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