title: Colorectal cancer screening: Opportunities to improve uptake, outcomes, and disparities.
abstract: Colorectal cancer screening has become a standard of care in industrialized nations for those 50 to 75 years of age, along with selected high-risk populations. While colorectal cancer screening has been shown to reduce both the incidence and mortality of colorectal cancer, it is a complex multi-disciplinary process with a number of important steps that require optimization before tangible improvements in outcomes are possible. For both opportunistic and programmatic colorectal cancer screening, poor participant uptake remains an ongoing concern. Furthermore, current screening modalities (such as the guaiac based fecal occult blood test, fecal immunochemical test and colonoscopy) may be used or performed suboptimally, which can lead to missed neoplastic lesions and unnecessary endoscopic evaluations. The latter poses the risk of adverse events, such as perforation and post-polypectomy bleeding, as well as financial impacts to the healthcare system. Moreover, ongoing disparities in colorectal cancer screening persist among marginalized populations, including specific ethnic minorities (African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Indigenous groups), immigrants, and those who are economically disenfranchised. Given this context, we aimed to review the current literature on these important areas pertaining to colorectal cancer screening, particularly focusing on the guaiac based fecal occult blood test, the fecal immunochemical test and colonoscopy.
authors.affiliation: Neal Shahidi, Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2K5, Canada.
authors.forename: Neal
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Shahidi
authors.affiliation: Neal Shahidi, Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2K5, Canada.
authors.forename: Winson Y
authors.initials: WY
authors.lastname: Cheung
keywords: Colonoscopy; Fecal immunochemical test; Fecal occult blood test; Neoplasia; Polyp