Colonoscopy prevents 15,000 cancer cases: researchers

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Researchers from Germany estimate that over 15,000 colorectal cancers will be prevented through 2010 since the country began using colonoscopy as the primary screening tool in 2002. This is all the more impressive given that participation rates were rather low.

Germany was the first country in the world to implement a nationwide colonoscopy screening program, according to the report in the April issue of the European Journal of Cancer.

In their study, Dr. Hermann Brenner, from the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, and colleagues calculated the number of colorectal cancers prevented between 2003 and 2010 thanks to colonoscopy screening.

In 2010, the investigators estimate, the total burden of colorectal cancer, thanks to colonoscopy screening, will be reduced by 13 percent, 19 percent, and 14 percent in women 55 to 59, 60 to 64, and 65 to 69 years of age, respectively. The corresponding reductions in men will be 11 percent, 15 percent, and 12 percent.

The results show that screening colonoscopy can markedly reduce the prevalence of colorectal cancer, the team states.

Improving screening participation rates will yield even greater benefits, they say. For subjects between 55 and 69 years of age, colonoscopy screening participation rates were 30 percent for men and 40 percent for women.

"This is not bad for a beginning," Brenner said in a statement, "but if we succeeded in encouraging even more people to participate in the screening program - such as by sending personal invitations to examinations due - many more cancers could be prevented."

SOURCE: European Journal of Cancer, April 2009.