ASGE Annual Postgraduate Course: Clinical Challenges and Real-Time Decision Making in GI Endoscopy (On-demand) | May 2023-Promoting Colonoscopy to Referring Networks and Patients

Video Transcription

To echo what Dr. Sahni had said, the perspective that I've been taking as a participant on  this panel is to try to create materials that allow we as gastroenterologists, us as gastroenterologists  to go to the community, whether it's our primary care community or to share best practices with our GI colleagues.  So a lot of this is going to be focused on how to deliver messages to our patients and  our primary care community so that information is appropriately then disseminated to the patients that they serve. So needless to say, colon cancer is common and deadly.  We know that. We've heard that. We're seeing it rise in younger patients. We stress, but I think as a community, we don't stress nearly enough that colon cancer  is nearly entirely preventable with a high quality colonoscopy. And we are faced with the concerns that nearly 50% of our population that's eligible for  screening is not getting screened. As Dr. Sahni echoed, any screening is better than no screening.  But we do have opportunities to stress that colonoscopy remains the only test that prevents cancer of the entire colon.  And that's one of the posts that the ASGE recently put on their social media pages, that we have the opportunity to prevent colon cancer.  And using the Multi-Society Task Force recommendations, we then have the opportunity to offer FIT  testing every year, followed by FIT-Fecal DNA testing, more commonly known as COLAGARD. And what we'll see here in subsequent slides is that there's been certainly an increased  use of various types of noninvasive stool testing, including FIT-Fecal DNA. And as we'll see through some studies that have come out recently, there unfortunately  has been some inappropriate use of FIT-Fecal DNA in the community. So to build on what we've seen already, these are some of the materials that we provide  to our patients in various forms. We'll add our logo and do some co-branding, but when patients are asking about various  types of screening and prevention methods, this is what we provide them.

Video Summary

In this video, the speaker emphasizes the importance of creating materials for gastroenterologists to educate and inform the community about colon cancer screening and prevention. They highlight that colon cancer is common and deadly, but also largely preventable with a high-quality colonoscopy. They express concern that about 50% of the eligible population is not getting screened. The speaker suggests that any screening is better than no screening and promotes the use of FIT-Fecal DNA testing, also known as COLAGARD, as a noninvasive alternative. However, they mention that there have been instances of inappropriate use of FIT-Fecal DNA testing in the community. The speaker also shares materials provided to patients regarding screening and prevention methods. No credits were mentioned in the transcript.

Keywords

gastroenterologists

colon cancer screening

colon cancer prevention

high-quality colonoscopy

FIT-Fecal DNA testing