Colonoscopies Done By GI Doc More Accurate

If you go for a colonoscopy to check out the health of your bowels (colon), it may be in your best interest to ensure the doctor who is performing the test is a gastroenterologist, a GI doctor.

While general practitioners can and do perform some colonoscopies, they don’t have the formal training of the GI doctors and can easily miss something that may otherwise have been noted.

According to a study published in the Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, GI doctors who performed colonoscopies had a higher colorectal cancer detection rate than did other doctors.

Researchers looked at 110,402 residents who lived in the province of Ontario, Canada, and who were 50 to 80 years old at the time of their colonoscopy. All had been told that their colonoscopy was negative, meaning nothing unusual or untoward was found. Eighty six percent had undergone their procedure at a hospital, as opposed to a clinic or office setting.

To qualify for this review, none of the residents had been diagnosed with previous history of  colorectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease or a recent colon surgery. The researchers followed each patient for 15 years and identified those who were given a new diagnosis of colorectal cancer.

Overall, 1,596 patients, 14.5%, developed colorectal cancer. Those patients who had their colonoscopy done by a general surgeon, internist, or family physician had a significantly higher risk of being diagnosed later with colorectal cancer, however where the procedure was done did not have an impact.

In other words, be sure that the person who is doing your colonoscopy is properly trained to do the procedure. While colonoscopies are a great way to help decrease the risk of developing colorectal cancer, how it’s done and who does it important.

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