‘It still prevented cancers’: Experts discuss furor over colonoscopy study and dissect the nuances
On Sunday, the New England Journal of Medicine published the interim results of a landmark trial examining the effect of inviting people to colonoscopy screening. The paper, which STAT covered, exploded across medical media and ignited debate over the trial’s results, how to interpret those results, and the popular coverage of the study.
The frenzy resulted over the trial’s main finding — which is that offering colonoscopies to people did not reduce cancer deaths within a 10-year period. This result jarred with the longstanding belief that this screening could almost eliminate colorectal cancers if everyone attended to it.
