Colonoscopies performed by Primary Care Doctors

Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancer and leading cause of death. Current guidelines recommend that a person be screened for colon cancer at the age of fifty and at ten year intervals after that. It is recommended that everyone be screened for the disease. Unfortunately, there are not enough people qualified to screen everyone for the disease of colon cancer and the demand for the testing is increasing in countries like US.

If a primary care physician can do this procedure, there will be more practitioners available who can do colonoscopies. The individual may also be more comfortable having a physician they know do the procedure for them. This could increase the number of people agreeing to have a colonoscopy.

There is currently a lack of qualified endoscopists to perform all the necessary colon cancer screening tests needed in the current screening recommendations. A study was performed to see whether or not family practice practitioners and internists could adequately perform the colonoscopy procedure so that gastroenterologists don’t have to do them all. It was questioned whether or not the primary care doctor could do the procedure safely and effectively.

The study analyzed twelve other studies where the colonoscopy was performed by a primary care physician. This meant studying more than 18,000 patients, both men and women. The rates of findings including adenomas and adenocarcinomas were 28 percent and 1.7 percent respectively. A total of 89 percent of the time, the scope was able to reach the cecum and the complication rate was 0.04 percent. There were no deaths from the studies looked at.

The conclusion of the study was that primary care doctors can easily, safely and with efficacy perform colonoscopies as long as they are trained in the procedure. This means that more people will be able to perform colonoscopy testing for those needing to be screened for colon cancer. It is believed that around 90 percent of all colonoscopies should reach the cecum, which was nearly achieved by the primary care physicians. Even practiced gastroenterologists who had just completed training or were in the last seven months of training only achieved a rate of 86 percent. For the attending physician who was a gastroenterologist, the level was 97 percent. In addition, a huge study of endoscopists fully trained in colonoscopy showed an 88 percent reach-to-cecum rate.

Perhaps you can go and see your family doctor to get your colonoscopy in Singapore one day.