The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) yesterday urged people to regularly undergo fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) even if they have no suspicious symptoms, after research found that the test can effectively reduce the mortality rate for colon cancer, the nation’s No. 1 killer.
The administration and the National Taiwan University’s College of Public Health jointly monitored — over an average period of 3.1 years — the health of 1.16 million Taiwanese who underwent an FIT test between 2004 and 2009.
The research cross-analyzed the information gleaned in the project with the nation’s cancer registry records and cause-of-death data to ascertain the respective risks for colon cancer among those who had received the screening test and those who had not.
“The research participants accounted for 21.4 percent of all the 5.42 million eligible test recipients aged from 50 to 69 during the period. Among them, 30 percent underwent FIT regularly,” HPA Cancer Prevention Section Director Wu Chien-yuan (吳建遠) said.
Wu said the research showed that with a screening test rate of 21.4 percent, the death rate for colon cancer decreased by 10 percent among the screening group.
A further drop of 23 percent in the mortality rate was observed if the screening test rate increased to 40 percent in the group, Wu said, adding that the death rate could even decrease by 36 percent when the test rate reached 60 percent.
Research team member and National Taiwan University Hospital gastroenterology doctor Chiu Han-mo (邱瀚模) said that on average, four out of every 100 individuals who underwent an FIT tested positive for blood in the stool.
“People with a positive FIT result are 10 times more prone to developing colon cancer than those with a negative result. They are urged to undergo a colonoscopy to see if there are any precancerous colon polyps,” Chiu said.
The FIT is efficient at detecting blood in and around the stool, Chiu said, meaning it is likely to become more popular as a colon cancer screening test.
The administration said the government started offering free FITs to people aged from 50 to 69 in 2004, before further expanding the scheme in 2010 to make more than 1 million people eligible for the free screening.
After factoring in the advice given by the US Preventive Services Task Force, the HPA raised the maximum age limit for the scheme from 69 to 74 in 2013. As a result, the screening rate in the nation increased from just 4.8 percent in 2004 to 61.5 percent by the end of last year.
“Nearly 70 percent of colon cancer patients who received a nFIT caught the disease in its early stages, while only 7 percent saw their illness detected after it had already reached stage four,” the HPA said.
“On the other hand, nearly 20 percent of those who had never undergone the test were diagnosed with stage four colon cancer,” it added.
Additional reporting by CNA
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