Colorectal cancer affects in France, each year, 42,000 additional people and kills around 18,000. In an attempt to reduce this number, doctors from the French National Society of Gastroenterology are asking the government to speed up the implementation of new, faster and simpler immunological screening tests. These immunological tests (based on the detection of blood in the stool) would detect 2 to 2.5 times more cancers and 3 to 4 times more advanced adenomas (the precursors of malignant cancerous tumors).
Currently, colon cancer screening is done using a Hemoccult test: stool samples are taken three times in a row using a spatula, placed on a plate provided for this purpose and we send them to a laboratory. In 2008, the High Authority for Health issued a favorable opinion for the generalization of the new test, which requires only one sample, and which will be more easily accepted by people over 50, the target of generalized screening. And although the Cancer Plan 2009-2013 has planned to “gradually deploy the use of the immunological screening test for colorectal cancer throughout the country”, this deployment has been delayed. Indeed, the call for tenders for the purchase of these tests has still not been launched.
It is this delay that specialists denounce today. “The implementation of this test would double the number of lives saved, with 5,400 lives saved per year against 2,700 currently with the Hémoccult test” insists Professor Jean Faivre, honorary president of the SNFGE. Due to a different reading method, these tests detect 8 out of 10 cancers instead of 4 out of 10 for the Hemoccult tests.
