Letters
Screening for colorectal cancer
Interval bowel cancers may not be detected on faecal occult blood testing
BMJ 2014; 348 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2390 (Published 03 April 2014) Cite this as: BMJ 2014;348:g2390
- Anil Thomas George, specialist registrar1,
- Smeer Aggarwal, registrar1,
- Andrew Fields, data analyst2,
- Mike Vogler, centre manager2,
- Achyuth Menon, consultant surgeon1,
- Mukul Dube, consultant surgeon1
- 1Sherwood Hospital NHS Trust, Mansfield, UK
- 2Bowel Cancer Screening Eastern Hub, Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
- anilsola{at}hotmail.com
We report a high incidence of interval colorectal cancers that were not detected by the biennial faecal occult blood (FOB) screening test and highlight that a negative test result can falsely reassure patients and clinicians.1
We identified this problem after analysing data from the National Bowel Cancer Audit programme from a single centre catchment area (22 021 eligible patients) in the FOB testing age group (60-70 years) …
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