21–30 of 296 posts
The sad thing about the article is that skirts around mentioning the possibility that the American disease industry hates this trial because it will reduce their income. The good thing about the article is that it has a colonoscopy joke that also involves (bonus for the HN crowd) Bayesians.
As far as I know, countries outside the USA that recommend it are Switzerland, Germany, and Austria: https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11...
Can anybody comment on this?
You mean I get scoped every few years and it’s not even a thing??!
The problem with medical interventions, especially tests, is that they sometimes work. There will always be success stories. The big question is: are those success stories worth it, and are there other paths to those same success stories.
Do you prefer medical interventions that never work?
> are there other paths to those same success stories.
Yes, in the US other options include high sensitivity FOBT, FIT, sDNA-FIT and CT colonography.
My doctor recommended Cologuard, a test of your stool sample for cancerous DNA, instead of a colonoscopy. I can't imagine taking a colonoscopy now.
Colonoscopies come with potential for complications. There are actually a number of companies which have either released or plan to release non-invasive colorectal cancer screening based on blood dna sequencing. GRAIL, Freenome, and Guardant all have tests out or coming down the pipeline.
* props to @nwellinghof whose response I stole and adapted
This is actually a nice summary of how a clinical trial is more than just "did it have a positive or negative result?". Every single trial introduces some bias through the way it's designed. Good trials try to minimize bias or at least limit it to things we know don't introduce bias. The article does a nice job at digging into the nuances of the trial design and how it may influence (or not influence) the results. Th…
Colonoscopies come with potential for complications. There are actually a number of companies which have either released or plan to release non-invasive colorectal cancer screening based on blood dna sequencing. GRAIL, Freenome, and Guardant all have tests out or coming down the pipeline.
Misses from operator error, suboptimal bowel prep, or inability to complete the examination are more common and where we have the most potential for benefit from novel screening tests.
I don't know any gastroenterologist over 40 that hasn't had one (Australia). Do I take the government advice or copy what the doctors themselves are doing?