I hate to delve too deeply (pun intended) into controversial issues, especially when not directly related to anesthesia, but this may have some direct impact on us, especially the propofol jockeys out there (you know who you are):
A large multicenter trial of 2,600 patients sponsored by the National Cancer Institute has just reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that virtual colonoscopies detected 90 percent of the cancers and precancerous polyps that had been detected by standard colonoscopy. The Cancer Institute deemed this “comparable accuracy.”
A second study, also supported by the government and reported in The New England Journal, looked at patients who had returned for a follow-up colonoscopy five years after getting a clean bill of health. Not a single cancer was found among 1,256 patients at the follow-up exam, and only a minuscule number of advanced polyps, whose likelihood of becoming cancer is not known.
It's a well written editorial, but I'd be remiss if I didn't link to the the original work published in NEJM.
Not sure what the reaction is from the GI community. I guess we'll have to wait on next month's editiorial. I'd imagine its not a positive one. The arguments on both sides are valid. Invasive procedure vs radiation vs inability to intervene, etc. etc.
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