To screen for colorectal cancer, immunological tests have been recommended since 2008, but still not implemented while more effective. Gastroenterologists are getting impatient.
Rant from the French National Society of Gastro-Enterology (SNFGE). She denounces this January 15 a delay of 6 years in screening for colorectal cancer. Every year, 1,500 to 2,000 lives could be saved by the new test available: the immunoassay.
A more efficient and “better accepted” test
Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in France, with 18,000 deaths annually. It affects 42,000 new patients each year, most often after 50 years. As explained by Professor Jean-Christophe Saurin, hepato-gastroenterologist, France quickly acted to prevent the disease by setting up organized screening programs.
Listen to Prof. Jean-Christophe Saurin, hepato-gastroenterologist at Edouard Herriot hospital (Lyon): “ France is exemplary since it set up in 2005 a first test, the Hemoccult test, which already detects many cancers. “
The Hemoccult test looks for blood in the feces. To submit to it, you must submit 2 samples from 3 different stools. But, today there is a simpler test (a single sample) and also more effective: twice as many cancer detected (80%) and four times as many precancerous lesions. But it still has not replaced Hemmocult, when it would be “better accepted and better carried out by the targeted people,” according to the French National Society of Gastro-Enterology.
A “slow competition” in the implementation
However, the immunological test is unanimous in the various institutions and among doctors: the High Authority for Health recommended its use in 2008, the National Cancer Institute (INCa) in 2011 and the former Secretary of State, Nora Borra, had registered him to be substituted for the Hemoccult test in 2013. It has been six years since the transition should be made, and yet things have still not changed, notes the SNFGE. “Each month that passes, dozens more lives can be saved. We must quickly pass this test, ”insists Professor Saurin. Professor Laurent Beaugerie, president of the SNFGE, does not mince his words: he denounces “a competition of slowness between the Health Insurance and the successive cabinets of the Ministry of Health. “
Listen to Prof. Jean-Christophe Saurin, hepato-gastroenterologist: ” What slows down are administrative problems, organization of the implementation of this screening and costs. “
Gastroenterologists are therefore asking for guarantees: a call for tenders to purchase the immunological tests before the end of the month, a public timetable for the transition from Hemoccult to the immunological test and above all, the establishment of a “technical group for colorectal cancer screening ”which covers screening.
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