Adenoma characteristics in the English Bowel Cancer Screening Programme.

Aim: The English Bowel Cancer Screening Programme detects colorectal cancers and premalignant polyps in a faecal occult blood test-positive population. The aim of this work is to describe the detection rates and characteristics of adenomas within the programme, identify predictive factors influencing the presence or absence of carcinoma within adenomas and identify the factors predicting the presence of advanced colonic neoplasia in different colon segments.

Method: The Bowel Cancer Screening System was retrospectively searched for polyps detected during colonoscopies between June 2006 and June 2012, at which time a guaiac test was being used.

A multicenter pragmatic study of an evidence-based intervention to improve adenoma detection: the Quality Improvement in Colonoscopy (QIC) study.

Background And Study Aims: Low adenoma detection rates (ADRs) at colonoscopy are linked to significantly higher interval cancer rates, and vary between colonoscopists. Studies demonstrate that lesion detection is improved by: withdrawal time of ≥ 6 minutes; use of hyoscine butylbromide; position change; and rectal retroflexion. We evaluated the feasibility of implementing the above "bundle" of interventions into colonoscopy practice, and the effect on ADR.

Urgent cancer referral guidelines: a retrospective cohort study of referrals for upper gastrointestinal adenocarcinoma.

Dyspepsia in primary care is common and guidelines indicate that patients with alarm symptoms, as defined by the urgent cancer referral guidelines, should be investigated by gastroscopy. The specificity and sensitivity of alarm symptoms is poor and only a small percentage of patients will turn out to have malignant disease. This primary care study shows that employing current guidelines will identify only 72% of patients at their initial visit to a general practitioner, but this figure could be increased to 86% if the guidelines included patients with weight loss or anaemia in the absence of dyspepsia.