A more proactive approach to colorectal cancer screening using fecal immunochemical tests resulted in high participation and detection rates across a large health system, according to data presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology.
Results of the innovative outreach initiative, which identified high-risk individuals outside the traditional healthcare system, achieved an impressive 32% response rate. More importantly, 7% of individuals who followed through with a colonoscopy ultimately were diagnosed with CRC.
“This speaks to a population that was higher risk and needed to be screened but hadn’t done so because they weren’t visiting a primary care physician,” said senior researcher Rachel Issaka, MD, MAS, a gastroenterologist and health services researcher at the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research of the University of Washington, in Seattle. “This is a group that we would have never diagnosed without this initiative.”