April 2010

Testing for bowel cancer

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has just published this article that highlights the benefit of testing for blood in the stool to detect bowel cancer. The article demonstrates the value of tests similar to ours that use antibodies to specifically detect blood (immunochemical tests). The article states "immunochemical faeces tests showed good diagnostic performance for colorectal cancer . . high quality studies on their role in the diagnostic investigation of colorectal cancer in primary care are urgently needed." The sensitivity of the test was rated as high and the specificity of the test was rated as good.

Reference: Value of symptoms and additional diagnostic tests for colorectal cancer in primary care: systematic review and meta-analysis. Petra Jellema et al. BMJ 2010;340:c1269.