Colon Cancer Screening: Don’t Settle For A Turkey Of A Test

The wildly deceiving world of screening-test math explained. And how to turn it in your favour.

Better safe than sorry; even doctors need to double-check!— Image designed by Dr. Lutz E. Kraushaar, integrating elements of AI tool Designer

What is new?

FDA-approved stool tests for colorectal cancer (CRC) miss 60–90% of cases. This is what a landmark study uncovered in September this year. And nobody is talking about it.

Why it matters

The 95 million Americans aged 50+ (and their peers in the rest of the world) who qualify for a yearly stool test have a right to know how poorly these tests perform. Because armed with this knowledge and a rarely applied tweak to using the tests you can substantially improve your chances of avoiding the disease.

Your takeaways

• A primer on the performance of the five most commonly used stool tests.
• A 101 on translating any screening test’s result into odds and probabilities.
• A downloadable spreadsheet for you to do all that without any statistics skills.

A Caution Upfront:

Do not take this post as medical advice. It is an epidemiologist’s presentation of the data about colorectal cancer screening, intended to help you make a…