When endoscopists frequently find polyps during their exams, there are fewer interval cancers diagnosed between tests.

The adenoma detection rate or the percentage of time that at least one polyp is found during all of the colonoscopies done by an individual endoscopist is one measure of quality performance.  When that rate falls below 20 percent, the risk of colorectal cancer being diagnosed within the next five years goes up significantly.

When the rate was below 11 percent, the risk of an interval cancer was more than 10 times higher than when adenomas were found more than 20 percent of the time according to research published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The same study found that reaching the cecum — or cecal intubation rate — had no impact on interval cancers. Read the rest of this entry »