Improve performance, but don’t discount patient factors
The study is important at this time because colorectal cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, Atsushi Sakuraba, MD, of the University of Chicago said in an interview.
“Screening colonoscopy has been shown to decrease CRC mortality, but factors influencing outcomes after screening colonoscopies remain to be determined,” he said.
“It was expected that high-quality colonoscopy performed by an endoscopist with ADR of 25% or greater was associated with a lower risk for CRC death,” Dr. Sakuraba said. “The strength of the study is that the authors demonstrated that high-quality colonoscopy was more important in individuals with high-risk adenomas, such as advanced adenomas or at least three adenomas.”
The study findings have implications for practice in that they show the importance of monitoring performance quality in screening colonoscopy, Dr. Sakuraba said, “especially when patients have high-risk adenomas.” However, “the authors included only age and sex as variables, but the influence of other factors, such as smoking, [body mass index], and race, need to be studied.”
The researchers had no financial conflicts to disclose. Dr. Sakuraba had no financial conflicts to disclose.