Continuous quality improvement of colorectal cancer screening

Quality assurance is a key issue in colorectal cancer screening, because effective screening is able to improve primary prevention of the cancer. The quality measure may be described in terms: how well the screening test tells who truly has a disease (sensitivity) and who truly does not have a disease (specificity). This paper raises concerns about identification of the optimal screening test for colorectal cancer. Colonoscopy vs flexible sigmoidoscopy in colorectal cancer screening has been a source of ongoing debate. A multicentre randomised controlled trial comparing flexible sigmoidoscopy with usual care showed that flexible sigmoidoscopy screening is able to diminish the incidence of distal and proximal colorectal cancer, and also mortality related to the distal colorectal cancer. However, colonoscopy provides a more complete examination and remains the more sensitive exam than flexible sigmoidoscopy. Moreover, colonoscopy with polypectomy significantly reduces colorectal cancer incidence and colorectal cancer-related mortality in the general population. The article considers the relative merits of both methods and stresses an ethical aspect of patient's involvement in decision-making. Patients should be informed not only about tests tolerability and risk of endoscopy complications, but also that different screening tests for bowel cancer have different strength to exclude colonic cancer and polyps. The authorities calculate effectiveness and costs of the screening tests, but patients may not be interested in statistics regarding flexible sigmoidoscopy screening and from an ethical point of view, they have the right to chose colonoscopy, which is able to exclude a cancer and precancerous lesions in the whole large bowel.