Three years of colorectal cancer screening in Denmark

The Danish National Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme was implemented in March 2014 and is offered free of charge to all residents aged 50-74 years. The aim of this study is to compare performance indicators from the Danish National Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme to the recommendations from European Guidelines in order to assure the quality of the programme and to provide findings relevant to other population-based colorectal cancer screening programmes.

Based on data from the Danish Colorectal Cancer Screening Database, we evaluated all performance indicators for which the European Guidelines provided acceptable level, desirable level or the level from first screening rounds in population-based studies using FIT.

All performance indicators were above the acceptable level and/or in line with the level from the first screening round in population-based studies using FIT. Whenever the European Guidelines provided a desirable level for a performance indicator, the Danish National Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme was close to or above this desirable level.

Compared to the European Guidelines, all performance indicators were above the acceptable level and close to the desirable level. Based on these findings, the implementation of the National Danish Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme is considered a success and the programme is hopefully in the process of reducing colorectal cancer morbidity and mortality in Denmark. This study provides relevant information for comparisons to other population-based public service colorectal cancer screening programmes as well as for future revisions of guidelines.