Doctors reluctant to recommend Colon Screening

A recent study has determined that even those people who regularly visit their primary care doctor aren’t getting the recommendation to be screened for colorectal cancer. This is even worse for those who don’t see the doctor regularly. Screening can include the FOBT screening or FIT screening for blood in the stool or it can include colon cancer screening with colonoscopy or flexible

sigmoidoscopy. Colon cancer screening usually begins at age 50 unless a person has a strong family history of colon cancer.

The study was conducted by a group from the University of California Davis and the University of Washington in Seattle and reviewed records from more than 50,000 individuals aged 50 to 78. This is an age group that is eligible to be screened for colon cancer.

In the US, statistics showed that about 149,000 individuals were diagnosed with colon cancer per year in recent years and that about 50,000 of these people died from colon cancer per year. Screening can be preventative for cancer by removing precancerous polyps that would turn into cancer if left within the body. It also can detect colon cancer at a lesser degree than what would happen if symptoms were allowed to happen first.

The researchers found that primary care doctors—the ones who should be recommending colon cancer screening—often fail to recommend screening at the appropriate time, missing opportunities when the doctor should be doing the recommendation.

This means that many people are unnecessarily getting and/or dying from colon cancer than should be. Much of the problem was due to people not seeing the doctor very much. When they don’t see the doctor often, they see the doctor for illnesses rather that general health care and colon cancer is not foremost on the minds of the doctor at the time of the visit. The researchers, on the other hand, found that even those who went regularly to the doctor and went for regular health care still didn’t get offered screening methods of any kind for colorectal screening.

It used to be that breast cancer screening was underutilized and this was remedied through increased patient education, reminder slips, financial incentives and educational programs for doctors. Now there isn’t a problem with breast cancer screening and most women who are eligible to be screened for are being screened for. The researchers recommended a similar program for colon cancer screening so that more people can be adequately screening for the disease of colon cancer. Currently the rate of screening is only about 57 percent. It is hoped to increase the rate of screening to as close to 100 percent as possible.

It is hoped that some of the health plans can get on board with recommending or sending out information to their subscribers in order to increase patient recognition of the need for colon cancer screening. If more patients ask about colon cancer screening, then doctors will be more likely to make the recommendation.