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VIDEO: ‘Good, bad news’ for the future of colorectal cancer screening
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LOS ANGELES — In this exclusive video from GI Outlook 2019, T.R. Levin, MD, the chief of gastroenterology at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, discusses the future of colorectal cancer screening and its viability in practice management.
“I think increasingly patients are going to ask for non-invasive screening instead of colonoscopy or using non-invasive screening to achieve much higher population rates of screening,” Levin told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease.
Levin said Kaiser Permanente has conducted mailed outreach to patients using fecal immunochemical tests (FIT), which has led to an increase in screening rates above 80% in a 5-year period. There was also a 52% decrease in colorectal cancer mortality and a 26% decrease in colorectal cancer incidence.
Additionally, Levin said future trends for colonoscopy and colorectal cancer screening may lead to an increase of earlier detection based on American Cancer Society recommendations.
“I think it’s much more efficient and much more cost effective if you do that screening with a non-invasive test,” Levin said.