Participation in clinical trials increases the detection of pre-malignant lesions during colonoscopy

colorectal adenoma detection has been associated with the effectiveness of cancer prevention. Clinical trials have been designed to determine the role of several interventions to increase the detection of pre-malignant lesions. We hypothesized that colonoscopy in the setting of clinical trials has a higher pre-malignant lesion detection rate.

a cross-sectional study was performed that compared the detection of pre-malignant lesions in 147 randomly sampled non-research colonoscopies and 294 from the control group of two prospective trials. Outpatients aged 40-79 years, with no personal history of colorectal cancer (CRC) were included.

baseline characteristics were similar between the two groups. The pre-malignant lesion detection rate in the trial vs control group was 65.6 % vs 44.2 % (OR 2.411; 95 % CI: 1.608-3.614; p < 0.001), the polyp detection rate was 73.8 % vs 59.9 % (OR 1.889; 95 % CI: 1.242-2.876; p = 0.003), the adenoma detection rate was 62.6 % vs 44.2 % (OR 2.110; 95 % CI: 1.411-3.155; p < 0.001) and the sessile serrated lesion detection rate was 17 % vs 4.1 % (OR 4.816; 95 % CI: 2.014-11.515; p < 0.001). The mean number of pre-malignant and sessile serrated lesions was 1.70 vs 1.06 (p = 0.002) and 0.32 vs 0.06 (p = 0.001) lesions per colonoscopy, respectively. There was no significant change in any of the study outcomes according to the multivariate analysis with each single potential confounder.

patients involved in colonoscopy trials may benefit from higher quality examinations, as shown by the higher detection rates. Institutions should consider supporting clinical research in colonoscopy as a simple means to improve colonoscopy quality and colorectal cancer prevention.