About 44% more 40-year-olds would need to be screened to detect the same number of colorectal cancer cases as 45-year-olds, according to a study published June 18 by Epic Research.
Epic’s research division used Cosmos data for the study. Cosmos is a dataset representing more than 300 million patient records from a community of Epic health systems across the U.S., Canada, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
Here are five notes from the study:
- The study used data from more than 3 million first-time colorectal cancer screening events among U.S. adults ages 45 to 59 who were screened after the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force lowered its recommended screening age from 50 to 45 in 2021.
Eligible screening events included colonoscopy, stool DNA tests, fecal immunochemical tests, fecal occult blood tests, flexible sigmoidoscopy and CT colonography. - Researchers analyzed how colorectal cancer detection rates increased with age among patients ages 45 to 59 after the guideline change to model how detection rates would change among younger patients.
- According to the model, about 159 cases of colorectal cancer would be detected among 45-year-olds per 100,000 screenings, while only 111 cases would be detected among 40-year-olds per 100,000. The rate dropped to 77 per 100,000 among 35-year-olds.
- The model projected that 132 colorectal cancers per 100,000 would be detected among 40-year-old men compared to 98 per 100,000 among 40-year-old women.
- The Southern U.S. had the highest projected colorectal cancer detection rate among 40-year-olds, at 128 per 100,000, compared to the Western U.S., which had the lowest rate at 83 per 100,000.
Read the full study here.
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