Colonoscopy screening exams that are recommended for older U.S. adults failed to reduce the risk of death from colon cancer in a 10-year study that questions the benefits of the common procedure.
While people who underwent the exam were 18 percent less likely to develop colon cancer, the overall death rate among screened and unscreened people were the same at about 0.3 percent, researchers from Poland, Norway and Sweden said in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Health experts at the World Health Organization, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and other bodies issue recommendations on screening for breast, prostate, colon and other cancers to catch disease in its earliest and most treatable stages. Debate has ensued over the last few years over whether some preventive screenings are helpful in the general population because of possible patient harm and unnecessary treatment, leading to higher health care costs.
“This relatively small reduction in the risk of colorectal cancer and the nonsignificant reduction in the risk of death are both surprising and disappointing,” Jason Dominitz, a gastroenterologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Douglas Robertson of the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine said in an accompanying commentary. “Additional analyses, including longer follow-up and results from other ongoing comparative effectiveness trials, will help us to fully understand the benefits of this test.”